Nonlinear stability of pulsational mode of gravitational collapse in self-gravitating hydrostatically bounded dust molecular cloud

Abstract

The pulsational mode of gravitational collapse (PMGC) in a hydrostatically bounded dust molecular cloud is responsible for the evolution of tremendous amount of energy during star formation. The source of free energy for this gravito-electrostatic instability lies in the associated self-gravity of the dispersed phase of relatively huge dust grains of solid matter over the gaseous phase of background plasma. The nonlinear stability of the same PMGC in an infinite dusty plasma model (plane geometry approximation for large wavelength fluctuation in the absence of curvature effects) is studied in a hydrostatic kind of homogeneous equilibrium configuration. By the standard reductive perturbation technique, a Korteweg–de Vries (KdV) equation for investigating the nonlinear evolution of the lowest order perturbed self-gravitational potential is developed in a time-stationary (steady-state) form, which is studied analytically as well as numerically. Different nonlinear structures (soliton-like and soliton chain-like) are found to exist in different situations. Astrophysical situations, relevant to it, are briefly discussed.