Observation of the Korteweg-de Vries soliton in molecular dynamics simulations of a dusty plasma medium

The excitation and evolution of Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) solitons in a dusty plasma medium are studied using Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations. The dusty plasma medium is modelled as a collection of dust particles interacting through Yukawa potential, which takes into account dust charge screening due to the lighter electron and ion species. The collective response of such screened dust particles to an applied electric field impulse is studied here. An excitation of a perturbed positive density pulse propagating in one direction along with a train of negative perturbed rarefactive density oscillations in the opposite direction is observed. These observations are in accordance with evolution governed by the KdV equation. Detailed studies of (a) amplitude vs. width variation of the observed pulse, (b) the emergence of intact separate pulses with an associated phase shift after collisional interaction amidst them, etc., conclusively qualify the positive pulses observed in the simulations as KdV solitons. It is also observed that by increasing the strength of the electric field impulse, multiple solitonic structures get excited. The excitations of the multiple solitons are similar to the experimental observations reported recently by Boruah et al. [Phys. Plasmas 23, 093704 (2016)] for dusty plasmas. The role of coupling parameter has also been investigated here, which shows that with increasing coupling parameter, the amplitude of the solitonic pulse increases whereas its width decreases.