Shock waves in strongly coupled one-dimensional dusty plasmas under Yukawa interactions

Abstract

The numerical investigation of shock waves in a chain of dust particles is conducted using the molecular dynamics simulation method. Assuming that the first pulse in the shock front is a solitary wave, we derive an analytical approximate expression to demonstrate how the shock velocity depends on the piston velocity and the system parameters, such as the charge of the dust particles, the initial lattice constant, and the screening parameter. It is found that the shock wave velocity increases as the piston velocity and coupling parameter increase, while it decreases as the screening parameter increases. The analytical results are in good agreement with the molecular dynamics simulation results.