Laboratory Observations of Self-Excited Dust Acoustic Shocks

Repeated, self-excited dust acoustic shock waves (DASWs) have been observed in a dc glow discharge dusty plasma using high-speed video imaging. Two major observations are reported: (1) The self-steepening of a nonlinear dust acoustic wave (DAW) into a saw-tooth wave with sharp gradient in dust density, very similar to those found in numerical solutions of the fully nonlinear fluid equations for a nondispersive DAW [B. Eliasson and P. K. Shukla, Phys. Rev. E 69, 067401 (2004)], and (2) the collision and confluence of two DASWs.