Ion acoustic shock waves in a collisional dusty plasma

The effect of ion-dust collisions on small amplitude nonlinear dust ion acoustic waves has been investigated. Analytical investigation shows that propagation of the small amplitude wave is governed by Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) Burger equation. It is found that the coefficient of the Burger term is proportional to the ion viscosity, which arises through ion-dust collisions and depends on the temperatures and number densities of the electrons, ions and also on the number density of dust grains, as seen in a recent experiment (Nakamura ). Numerical investigations on the basis of that experimental data show that the dust-ion acoustic wave exhibits both oscillatory and monotonic shocks depending on the number density of dust particles, as observed in that experiment [Nakamura , Phys. Rev. Lett. 83, 1602 (1999)]. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.