Effect of ion suprathermality on arbitrary amplitude dust acoustic waves in a charge varying dusty plasma

Arbitrary amplitude dust acoustic waves in a high energy-tail ion distribution are investigated. The effects of charge variation and ion suprathermality on the large amplitude dust acoustic (DA) soliton are then considered. The correct suprathermal ion charging current is rederived based on the orbit motion limited approach. In the adiabatic case, the variable dust charge is expressed in terms of the Lambert function and we take advantage of this transcendental function to show the existence of rarefactive variable charge DA solitons involving cusped density humps. The dust charge variation leads to an additional enlargement of the DA soliton, which is less pronounced as the ions evolve far away from Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution. In the nonadiabatic case, the dust charge fluctuation may provide an alternate physical mechanism causing anomalous dissipation the strength of which becomes important and may prevail over that of dispersion as the ion spectral index kappa increases. Our results may provide an explanation for the strong spiky waveforms observed in auroral electric field measurements by Ergun et al. [Geophys. Res. Lett. 25, 2025 (1998)]. (C) 2009 American Institute of Physics. [DOI: 10.1063/1.3118592]