Properties of drift solitons in plasmas implied by model experiments in rapidly rotating shallow water

Model experiments carried out in analogous hydrodynamic facilities generate predictions of the properties of drift vortices and solitons in magnetized plasmas. These predictions are based on the physical analogy between the drift vortices and solitons which are being studied in plasmas, on the one hand, and the Rossby solitons and vortices in rapidly rotating shallow water, on the other. The formations in water are studied directly in the experiments described here. The results of this experimental modeling lead to a new viewpoint regarding drift solitons in plasmas. According to this viewpoint, drift solitons with dimensions greater than the typical ion Larmor radius fall in the following categories: (a) vortices which carry trapped particles; (b) attractors into which unstable, extended, large-amplitude perturbations develop; (c) solitons with unusual properties (their collisions are inelastic; in particular, they result in a coalescence of the colliding entities); (d) monopole vortices (anticyclones)