Two wave collapses and a strange soliton in current carrying plasmas

✍ Scribed by H. Schamel; I.O. Hassan

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1997
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 649 KB
• Volume: 105
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0167-2789
• DOI: 10.1016/s0167-2789(97)89582-6

✦ Synopsis

A current driven plasma is analyzed in the two-fluid approach. A Lagrangian treatment of the charge neutral system results in a nonlinear scalar wave equation, which exhibits two different singular wave solutions. One wave collapse is associated with a density excavation, the other with a density compression. The latter represents the scenario of wave breaking and survives under charge separation. A new soliton solution is found just above threshold of linear instability of the charge nonneutral system in case of hot electrons. It is reminiscent of an ion acoustic KdV-soliton but differs from it in several respects such as in the propagation speed, in the strength and polarity of the electrostatic potential and in the spatial width. It is a finite ion temperature effect and disappears in the cold ion limit Ti ~ 0.