Dust-ion-acoustic shock waves in the presence of (r, q) distributed electrons

Abstract

A three-component dusty plasma system, with non-Maxwellian electrons, is investigated. The ions are considered to be mobile, the (spherical) dust is assumed to be stationary with charge- fluctuations, and the electrons follow the generalized velocity distribution function (VDF). The respective Burger’s equation, which manifests a shock structure, is derived by employing a reductive perturbation technique (RPT). It is deduced that dust charge fluctuations induce shock potential in a collisionless plasma system. The resultant perturbed potential is evaluated as affected by different plasma parameters, e.g. the ratios of electron to ion temperature (σ i ) and equilibrium densities (μ), and the non-thermal indices r and q. The shock amplitude is seen to decrease when the value of σ i is increased, and vice versa, whereas an opposite trend is observed for μ. It is found that for r = 0 and increasing values of spectral index q, amplitude of the potential distribution enhances while its width decreases. It is further noted that non-Maxwellian VDF significantly modifies the potential distribution. For the limiting case, namely, r = 0 and q → ∞ , the corresponding Maxwellian results are retrieved which benchmarks our findings. Present work will be useful in understanding the nonlinear propagation of dust-ion-acoustic shock waves in system where non-thermal population—as caused by various physical processes—of electrons are observed.