The excitation and propagation of finite amplitude low frequency solitary
waves are investigated in an Argon plasma impregnated with kaolin dust
particles. A nonlinear longitudinal dust acoustic solitary wave is excited by
pulse modulating the discharge voltage with a negative potential. It is found
that the velocity of the solitary wave increases and the width decreases with
the increase of the modulating voltage, but the product of the solitary wave
amplitude and the square of the width remains nearly constant. The experimental
findings are compared with analytic soliton solutions of a model Kortweg-de
Vries equation.Comment: The manuscripts includes six figure