Influences of the dust size and the dust charge variations to the low-frequency wave modes in a dusty plasma

The effects of both the dust size distribution and the adiabatic dust charge variation in unmagnetized dusty plasmas have been studied. Both the analytical and the numerical results are given to compare the differences between the dust plasma with a power-law distribution and the mono-sized dusty plasma. The comparisons are also given between the dusty plasmas with or without charge fluctuations. The present analytical results show that only rarefactive solitary waves exist in this system, which is similar to that without dust charge variation. However, it is shown that the presence of adiabatic dust charge variations and the dust size distribution can significantly influence the characteristic of low-frequency wave modes. This investigation can be relevant to the dust acoustic waves in various space plasma environments, such as Jupiter's ring and interstellar dusty clouds. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.