Experimental study of nonlinear dust acoustic solitary waves in a dusty plasma

TL;DR

This paper experimentally investigates how nonlinear dust acoustic solitary waves behave in a dusty plasma, focusing on their excitation, velocity, width, and amplitude relationships, and compares results with theoretical KdV model solutions.

Contribution

It provides new experimental data on the properties of nonlinear dust acoustic solitary waves and validates these findings against analytical KdV soliton solutions.

Findings

Wave velocity increases with modulating voltage

Wave width decreases as voltage increases

Product of amplitude and squared width remains nearly constant

Abstract

The excitation and propagation of finite amplitude low frequency solitary waves are investigated in an Argon plasma impregnated with kaolin dust particles. A nonlinear longitudinal dust acoustic solitary wave is excited by pulse modulating the discharge voltage with a negative potential. It is found that the velocity of the solitary wave increases and the width decreases with the increase of the modulating voltage, but the product of the solitary wave amplitude and the square of the width remains nearly constant. The experimental findings are compared with analytic soliton solutions of a model Kortweg-de Vries equation.