Theoretical study of head-on collision of dust acoustic solitary waves in a strongly coupled complex plasma

TL;DR

This paper provides a theoretical analysis of how head-on collisions affect dust acoustic solitary waves in strongly coupled complex plasmas, revealing significant phase shift variations with coupling strength and medium compressibility.

Contribution

It introduces a coupled nonlinear dynamical model for DASWs in strongly coupled plasmas and analyzes collision effects across different coupling regimes.

Findings

Significant phase shift differences between strongly and weakly coupled regimes.

Phase shift changes sign beyond a certain compressibility threshold.

The model predicts how collision outcomes depend on plasma parameters.

Abstract

We investigate the propagation characteristics of two counter propagating dust acoustic solitary waves (DASWs) undergoing a head-on collision, in the presence of strong coupling between micron sized charged dust particles in a complex plasma. A coupled set of nonlinear dynamical equations describing the evolution of the two DASWs using the extended Poincar\'e-Lighthill-Kuo perturbation technique is derived. The nature and extent of post collision phase-shifts of these solitary waves are studied over a wide range of dusty plasma parameters in a strongly and a weakly coupled medium. We find a significant change in the nature and amount of phase delay in the strongly coupled regime as compared to a weakly coupled regime. The phase shift is seen to change its sign beyond a threshold value of compressibility of the medium for a given set of dusty plasma parameters.