Nonlinear excitations in strongly-coupled plasma lattices: envelope solitons, kinks and intrinsic localized modes

Ensembles of charged particles (plasmas) are a highly complex form of matter, most often modeled as a many-body system characterized by weak inter-particle interactions (electrostatic coupling). However, strongly-coupled plasma configurations have recently been produced in laboratory, either by creating ultra-cold plasmas confined in a trap or by manipulating dusty plasmas in discharge experiments. In this paper, the nonlinear aspects involved in the motion of charged dust grains in a one-dimensional plasma monolayer (crystal) are discussed. Different types of collective excitations are reviewed, and characteristics and conditions for their occurrence in dusty plasma crystals are discussed, in a quasi-continuum approximation. Dust crystals are shown to support nonlinear kink-shaped supersonic solitary longitudinal excitations, as well as modulated envelope localized modes associated with longitudinal and transverse vibrations. Furthermore, the possibility for intrinsic localized modes (ILMs) — Discrete Breathers (DBs) — to occur is investigated, from first principles. The effect of mode-coupling is also briefly considered. The relation to previous results on atomic chains, and also to experimental results on strongly-coupled dust layers in gas discharge plasmas, is briefly discussed.