Modulational Instability of Dust Acoustic Waves in Non-Maxwellian Strongly Coupled Dusty Plasmas

Abstract

In this paper, the modulational instability (MI) of dust acoustic waves (DAWs) is examined in a strongly coupled dusty plasma system containing negatively charged dust grains, nonthermal ions, and superthermal electrons. To describe the MI criteria of DAWs, the nonlinear Schrödinger equation (NLSE) is derived using the Krylov–Bogoliubov-Mitropolsky (KBM) perturbation method. Our results show that both modulationally stable and unstable domains exist in such a strongly coupled dusty plasma system. It is found that modulational stable and unstable domains are significantly modified by the related dusty plasma parameters such as ion nonthermality, electron superthermality, and the temperatures of both electron and ion. Moreover, the MI growth rate was found to be strongly modified by those parameters. The results of this investigation may be important in understanding nonlinear phenomena in laboratory and space plasmas, particularly in the upper layer of the Earth’s atmosphere (viz., Earth’s mesosphere).