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Experimental observation of cnoidal waveform of nonlinear dust acoustic waves
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Experimental observation of cnoidal waveform of nonlinear dust acoustic waves

Bin Liu, J Goree, T. M Flanagan, Abhijit Sen, Sanat Kumar Tiwari, Gurudas Ganguli and Chris Crabtree
Physics of plasmas, Vol.25(11), p.113701
11/2018
DOI: 10.1063/1.5046402
url
https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1863399View
Open Access

Abstract

The experimentally measured waveform of nonlinear dust acoustic waves in a plasma is shown to be accurately described by a cnoidal function. This function, which is predicted by nonlinear theory, has broad minima and narrow peaks. Fitting the experimental waveforms to the cnoidal function also provides a measure of the wave's nonlinearity, namely, the elliptical parameter k. By characterizing experimental results at various wave amplitudes, we confirm that the parameter k increases and approaches a maximum value of unity, as the wave amplitude is increased. The underlying theory that predicts the cnoidal waveform as an exact solution of a Korteweg-de Vries model equation takes account of the streaming ions that are responsible for the spontaneous excitation of the dust acoustic waves.

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