Nonlinearly coupled whistlers and dust-acoustic perturbations in dusty plasmas

The nonlinear interaction between magnetic-field-aligned coherent whistlers and dust-acoustic perturbations (DAPs) in a magnetized dusty plasma is considered. The interaction is governed by a pair of equations consisting of a nonlinear Schrodinger equation for the modulated whistler wave packet and an equation for the nonresonant DAPs in the presence of the ponderomotive force generated by the whistlers. The coupled equations are employed to investigate the occurrence of modulational instability, in addition to the formation of whistler envelope solitons. This investigation is relevant to amplitude modulated electron whistlers in magnetized space dusty plasmas. (c) 2005 American Institute of Physics.