Effect of Electronic Inertia on the Gravito-Electrostatic Sheath Structure Formation

Abstract

The gravito-electrostatic sheath (GES) model, previously proposed to address the fundamental issues on the surface emission mechanism of outflowing solar plasma on the basis of plasma−wall interaction processes with inertialess electrons on both bounded and unbounded scales, is reformulated in the light of active electron inertial response amid geometrical curvature effects. We accordingly derive the electron population distribution law considering both weak electron inertia and geometrical curvature effects in a new analytic construct coupled with the GES structure equations in a closed form. The analysis shows that the GES characteristics and hence plasma outflow dynamics are noticeably affected because of electron inertia. As a consequence of the electron inertia inclusion in contrast with the previous GES formalism, it is found that the GES width gets reduced (–5%), the sheath boundary gets contracted (–7%), the net current density at the surface gets reduced (–25%), the GES potential enhances (+17%), the transonic horizon decreases (‒35%), self-gravity enhances (+2%), and so forth. The obtained results are in fair accord with the existing model predictions centered around both the earlier GES formalisms and standard fluid-kinetic predictions.