Head-on collision and overtaking collision between an envelope solitary wave and a KdV solitary wave in a dusty plasma.

Abstract

Head-on collision and overtaking collision between a KdV solitary wave and an envelope solitary wave are first studied in present paper by using Particle-in-cell (PIC) method in a dusty plasma. There are phase shifts of the KdV solitary wave in both head-on collision and the overtaking collision, while no phase shift is found for the envelop solitary wave in any cases. The remarkable difference between head-on collision and the overtaking collision is that the phase shift of KdV solitary wave increases as amplitude of KdV solitary wave increases in head-on collision, while it decreases as amplitude of the KdV solitary wave increases in the overtaking collision. It is found that the maximum amplitude during the collision process is less than sum of two amplitudes of both solitary waves, but is larger than either of the amplitude.