Effect of nonthermal electron distributions on dust acoustic solitons in cometary plasmas

Abstract

We investigate the effect of nonthermal electrons modeled by two non-Maxwellian distribution functions, i.e., the (r, q) and Cairn’s distributions on the formation of dust acoustic (DA) solitons in an un-magnetized dusty plasma by incorporating the effect of dust streaming. We adopt the pseudopotential technique to obtain solitary wave solutions from fluid equations. It is seen that only rarefactive soliton can be obtained in such plasmas where ions are considered Boltzmannian and electrons non-Maxwellian. We find that soliton characteristics are strongly dependent on the nonthermal spectral indices r, q, and α and dust temperature Td. For (r, q) distribution, it is found that soliton amplitude increases but width decreases when the positive (negative) value of r decreases (increases). For Cairn’s distribution, we find that with the increase in α, soliton amplitude decreases. In space environments, such as cometary tails, solar wind, and Earth’s magnetosphere, where non-Maxwellian populations of electrons are present, our theoretical results show that the amplitude of soliton remains smaller than the Maxwellian case. Thus, Maxwellian distribution overestimates the soliton amplitude in such space environments. Therefore, we feel that our results will better interpret the results of observations, from cometary tails, and other space plasmas where nonlinear DA structures are likely to be observed.