Abstract
The effect of self-gravitation of massive dust grains is investigated on the shielded potential and the energy loss of pair of charged projectiles passing through a dust-contaminated plasma. Analytical general expressions are derived for the shielded potential and for the energy loss by incorporating two-body correlation effects. An interference contribution of these projectiles to the shielded potential and energy loss is observed that depends upon their orientation and separation distance. It is found that for two collinear projectiles the potential is enhanced by increasing dust Jeans frequency for separation less than Debye length and the energy loss versus projectile velocity decreases with the increase of Jeans frequency for arbitrary separation. The effect of inclination of two noncollinear projectiles on energy loss is also investigated for a fixed value of Jeans frequency
ω
j
d
=
4
×
10
−
4
ω
p
d
. The contribution to the energy loss due to the interference term has been separately calculated for a typical Jeans frequency. The present investigation would be useful to explain the coagulation of dust particles in the molecular clouds and in the ion-beam-driven inertial confinement fusion approach.