Abstract
The nonlinear propagation characteristics of dust ion acoustic waves in the presence of weak dissipations arising due to the low rates (compared to the ion oscillation frequency) of ionization, ion loss and dust charging are investigated. It is found that the ion acoustic solitary wave in such a dusty plasma is weakly dissipative in nature and is governed by a modified form of the Korteweg–de Vries equation. The analytical solution reveals that the ionization has a destabilizing effect, whereas ion loss and dust charge variation play a stabilizing role to control the ionization instability.