Evolution of weakly dissipative hybrid dust ion-acoustic solitons in complex plasmas

Possibility for hybrid ion-acoustic solitons to exist in complex (dusty) plasmas is investigated. Rarefactive solitonlike perturbations are damped and slowed down, mainly due to the plasma absorption and ion scattering on microparticles. Nevertheless, the amplitude of the evolving perturbation at any moment is given by the amplitude of the "conservative" soliton for the corresponding Mach number (so far as the conservative soliton exists). That property allows us to interpret the evolving rarefactive perturbation as a "weakly dissipative" hybrid dust ion-acoustic soliton. The weakly dissipative hybrid dust ion-acoustic solitons can be studied experimentally in laboratory complex plasmas. (C) 2009 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3240351]