No Arabic abstract
An experimental investigation of the propagation characteristics of shock waves in an inhomogeneous dusty plasma is carried out in the Dusty Plasma Experimental (DPEx) device. A homogeneous dusty plasma, made up of poly-dispersive kaolin particles, is initially formed in a DC glow discharge Argon plasma by maintaining a dynamic equilibrium of the pumping speed and the gas feeding rate. Later, an equilibrium density inhomogeneity in the dust fluid is created by introducing an imbalance in the original dynamic equilibrium. Non-linear wave structures are then excited in this inhomogeneous dusty plasma by a sudden compression in the dust fluid. These structures are identified as shock waves and their amplitude and width profiles are measured spatially. The amplitude of a shock structure is seen to increase whereas the width broadens as it propagates down a decreasing dust density profile. A modified-KdV-Burger equation is derived and used to provide a theoretical explanation of the results including the power law scaling of the changes in the amplitude and width as a function of the background density.
The properties of electrostatic transverse shear waves propagating in a strongly coupled dusty plasma with an equilibrium density gradient are examined using the generalized hydrodynamic equation. In the usual kinetic limit, the resulting equation has similarity to zero energy Schrodingers equation. This has helped in obtaining some exact eigenmode solutions in both cartesian and cylindrical geometries for certain nontrivial density profiles. The corresponding velocity profiles and the discrete eigenfrequencies are obtained for several interesting situations and their physics discussed.
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.
A theoretical investigation has been carried out to examine the ion-acoustic shock waves (IASHWs) in a magnetized degenerate quantum plasma system containing inertialess ultra-relativistically degenerate electrons, and inertial non-relativistic positively charged heavy and light ions. The Burgers equation is derived by employing reductive perturbation method. It can be seen that under consideration of non-relativistic positively charged heavy and light ions, the plasma model supports only positive electrostatic shock structure. It is also observed that the charge state and number density of the non-relativistic heavy and light ions enhance the amplitude of IASHWs, and the steepness of the shock profile is decreased with ion kinematic viscosity ($eta$). The findings of our present investigation will be helpful in understanding the nonlinear propagation of IASHWs in white dwarfs and neutron stars.
Excitation of nonlinear ion acoustic wave (IAW) by an external electric field is demonstrated by Vlasov simulation. The frequency calculated by the dispersion relation with no damping is verified much closer to the resonance frequency of the small-amplitude nonlinear IAW than that calculated by the linear dispersion relation. When the wave number $ klambda_{De} $ increases, the linear Landau damping of the fast mode (its phase velocity is greater than any ions thermal velocity) increases obviously in the region of $ T_i/T_e < 0.2 $ in which the fast mode is weakly damped mode. As a result, the deviation between the frequency calculated by the linear dispersion relation and that by the dispersion relation with no damping becomes larger with $klambda_{De}$ increasing. When $klambda_{De}$ is not large, such as $klambda_{De}=0.1, 0.3, 0.5$, the nonlinear IAW can be excited by the driver with the linear frequency of the modes. However, when $klambda_{De}$ is large, such as $klambda_{De}=0.7$, the linear frequency can not be applied to exciting the nonlinear IAW, while the frequency calculated by the dispersion relation with no damping can be applied to exciting the nonlinear IAW.
The dispersion properties of low frequency dust acoustic waves in the strong coupling regime are investigated experimentally in an argon plasma embedded with a mixture of kaolin and $MnO_2$ dust particles. The neutral pressure is varied over a wide range to change the collisional properties of the dusty plasma. In the low collisional regime the turnover of the dispersion curve at higher wave numbers and the resultant region of $partialomega/partial k < 0$ are identified as signatures of dust-dust correlations. In the high collisional regime dust neutral collisions produce a similar effect and prevent an unambiguous identification of strong coupling effects.