Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 June 1999
Both compressive and rarefactive solitons are found to exist in a warm adiabatic dusty plasma with two-temperature isothermal ions. The Korteweg–de Vries (KdV) equation for isothermal ions and KdV-type equations at a critical density of low-temperature ions are derived in order to discuss the properties of dust acoustic solitons. Using a quasipotential analysis, critical Mach numbers M1c and M2c are obtained such that rarefactive dust acoustic solitons exist when 1<M<M1c and compressive dust acoustic solitons exist when 1<M<M2c.