EXPERIMENTS ON GRID-EXCITED SOLITONS IN A POSITIVE-ION NEGATIVE-ION PLASMA

Experiments on the grid excitation and subsequent propagation of solitons in a positive-ion-negative-ion-electron plasma are described. In the experiments, the ratio of the negative-ion density to the positive-ion density in a quasineutral plasma is a parameter that can be varied. Hence solitons that are described by either the Korteweg-de Vries or the modified Korteweg-de Vries equations can be experimentally investigated.