Tsunami in a Complex (Dusty) Plasma

A tsunami is a wave with small amplitude offshore that dramatically increases in shallow waters. Here, we present an experimental observation and a molecular dynamics simulation of such amplitude increase of solitons in inhomogeneous crystalline monolayer complex plasma. Complex (dusty) plasmas are mixtures of mesoscopic particles with ion-electron plasmas, which are used to study wave phenomena at the kinetic level with the motion of every particle traced.