Modulation of dust acoustic waves with non-adiabatic dust charge fluctuations

The modulational instability of dust acoustic waves in a dusty plasma with non-adiabatic dust charge fluctuation is studied. Using the perturbation method, a modified nonlinear Schrodinger equation containing a damping term that comes from the effect of dust charge variation is derived. It is found that the modulational instability of the wave packet and the propagation characters of the envelope solitary waves are modified significantly by the non-adiabatic dust charge fluctuation. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.