ABSTRACT
The central point in the physics of dusty plasmas is to understand the charging of dust grains which are invariably immersed in an ambient plasma with radiative background. The elementary processes that lead to the charging of dust grains are quite complex and depend mainly on the environment around the dust grains. The important elementary dust grain charging processes are (i) interaction of dust grains with gaseous plasma particles, (ii) interaction of dust grains with energetic particles (electrons and ions) and (iii) interaction of dust grains with photons.
