Dipolar and tripolar vortices in dusty plasmas

The nonlinear dynamics is studied of a plasma that consists of hot electrons, cold ions and macroscopic dust particles, in the characteristic frequency range below the ion cyclotron and magnetosonic frequencies. The plasma is immersed in a sheared magnetic field and there exists a sheared plasma flow, in the direction perpendicular to the background magnetic field. In the frequency range above the dust-acoustic and dust charging frequencies, regarding the dust grains as immobile and with constant charges, the plasma is described by the first two moments of the drift-kinetic equation, accounting for the contributions of the stress-tenser and finite mass to the electron dynamics. In the strongly nonlinear regime, the plasma dynamics is governed by the vector nonlinearities arising from the E x B convection and the magnetic field lines' bending. For a linear density profile the standard dipole solution is found, while in the case of parabolic density profiles a coherent localized nonlinear solution is constructed in the form of a tripole, since stable simple monopolar vortices do not exist. Due to the presence of dust grains, the electron and ion diamagnetic currents do not cancel out, which limits the energy of these structures, provides their good spatial localization and increases the stability, compared to their ordinary-plasma counterparts.