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    Fluid simulation of Jeans instability in nonthermal dusty plasmas

    Dipankar Ray* and Pralay Kumar Karmakar†

    Bharati Kakad‡ and Amar Kakad§

    • Department of Physics, Tezpur University, Napaam, Tezpur, Sonitpur, Assam 784028, India

    • Indian Institute of Geomagnetism, New Panvel, Navi Mumbai 410218, India

    • *Contact author: dray056@tezu.ernet.in
    • †Contact author: pkk@tezu.ernet.in
    • ‡Contact author: bharati.kakad@iigm.res.in
    • §Contact author: amar.kakad@iigm.res.in

    Phys. Rev. E 113, 055212 – Published 15 May, 2026

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/jfw8-rv8g

    Abstract

    The Jeans instability is a fundamental mechanism driving the gravitational collapse and subsequent structure formation in diverse self-gravitating astrophysical environments. We present comprehensive numerical fluid simulations of the Jeans instability in a three component dusty plasma system. The high-energetic nonthermal electrons and ions are considered to follow κ distribution in velocity space with inertial dust as cold fluid. A Gaussian-type of initial density perturbation is introduced in the equilibrium density to initiate the simulations. The effects of the self-gravity parameter (αG) and nonthermal spectral index (κ) on the Jeans instability have been investigated by tracking the evolution of plasma parameters in the simulations. In the absence of gravity (αG=0), the system exhibits stable dust acoustic wave propagation with no Jeans instability growth, confirming pressure-dominated dynamics. Whereas, for αG>0, the density increases exponentially at center of plasma system manifesting localized collapse. The nonlinear growth rates estimated from our simulations increase with αG and show good agreement with the linear theory, particularly for lower αG values. Simulations further demonstrate that the nonlinear growth rate is weakly dependent on κ; however, lower κ values significantly decrease the characteristic collapse time (τc). These findings establish that nonthermal (non-Maxwellian) environments in protoplanetary disks and molecular clouds are more efficient at catalyzing rapid structure formation than previously predicted by traditional thermal (Maxwellian) models.

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