The effects of nonthermal ion distribution and finite dust temperature are incorporated in the investigation of nonlinear dust acoustic waves in an unmagnetized dusty plasma. Sagdeev pseudopotential method which takes into account the full nonlinearity of plasma equations, is used here to study solitary wave solutions. Possibility of co-existence of refractive and compressive solitons as a function of Mach number, dust temperature and concentration of nonthermal ions, is considered. For the fixed value of nonthermal ions, it is found that the effect of increase in dust temperature is to reduce the range of co-existence of compressive and refractive solitons. Particular concentration of nonthermal ions results in disappearance of refractive solitons while the decrease in dust temperature, at this concentration restores the lost refractive solitons.

Ion-acoustic solitons are investigated in the spatially inhomogeneous plasma having electrons-positrons and ions. The soliton characteristics are described by Korteweg-de Vries equation which has an additional term. The density and temperature of different species play an important role for the amplitude and width of the solitons. Numerical calculations show only the possibility of compressive solitons. Further, analytical results predict that the peak amplitude of soliton decreases with the decrease of density gradient. Soliton characteristics like peak amplitude and width are substantially different from those based on KdV theory for homogeneous plasmas

In the present investigation, ion-acoustic double layers in an inhomogeneous plasma consisting of Maxwellian and non-thermal distributions of electrons are studied.We have derived a modified Korteweg–de Vries (mKdV) equation for ion-acoustic double layers propagating in a collisionless inhomogeneous plasma. It is observed that the non-thermal parameters affect the amplitude and width of the double layer which further depend on the density.