Effect of Dust Grains on Solitary Kinetic Alfven Wave
- Max-Planck-Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, 85748 Garching (Germany)
- Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Science, Nanjing 210008 (China)
Solitary kinetic Alfven wave has been studied in dusty plasmas. The effect of the dust charge-to-mass ratio is considered. We derive the Sagdeev potential for the soliton solutions based on the hydrodynamic equations. A singularity in the Sagdeev potential is found and this singularity results in a bell-shaped soliton. The soliton solutions comprise two branches. One branch is sub-Alfvenic and the soliton velocities are much smaller than the Alfven speed. The other branch is super-Alfvenic and the soliton velocities are very close to or greater than the Alfven speed. Both compressive and rarefactive solitons can exist in each branch. For the sub-Alfvenic branch, the rarefactive soliton is a bell shape curve which is much narrower than the compressive one. In the super-Alfvenic branch, however, the compressive soliton is bell-shaped and the rarefactive one is broadened. We also found that the super-Alfvenic solitons can develop to other structures. When the charge-to-mass ratio of the dust grains is sufficiently high, the width of the rarefactive soliton will increase extremely and an electron density depletion will be observed. When the velocity is much higher than the Alfven speed, the bell-shaped soliton will transit to a cusped structure.
- OSTI ID:
- 21251272
- Journal Information:
- AIP Conference Proceedings, Vol. 1041, Issue 1; Conference: 5. international conference on the physics of dusty plasmas, Ponta Degada, Azores (Portugal), 18-23 May 2008; Other Information: DOI: 10.1063/1.2997055; (c) 2008 American Institute of Physics; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0094-243X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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