Nonextensive dust-acoustic solitary waves

The seminal paper of Mamun et al. [Phys. Plasmas 3, 702 (1996)] is revisited within the theoretical framework of the Tsallis statistical mechanics. The nonextensivity may originate from the correlation or long-range interactions in the dusty plasma. It is found that depending on whether the nonextensive parameter q is positive or negative, the dust-acoustic (DA) soliton exhibits compression for q<0 and rarefaction for q>0. The lower limit of the Mach number for the existence of DA solitary waves is greater (smaller) than its Maxwellian counterpart in the case of superextensivity (subextensivity).