Experiments on the ion-acoustic cylindrical solitons

Precise measurements on cylindrical ion-acoustic solitons are performed in a coaxial DP-type plasma device. Most of the characteristics observed experimentally are in good agreement with those of numerical simulations based on the modified Boussinesq or the Korteweg-de Vries (K-dV) equations. The spatial width of a soliton, however, is wider than the value predicted theoretically and also that of the one dimensional case. The scattering of solitons is observed after the collapse of cylindrical ion-acoustic soliton at the plasma column center. This is discussed as the resonance type scattering, and the conservations of energy and momentum are confirmed. The multiple soliton formation observed before the collapse is in good agreement with the theoretical prediction. (author)