Evolution of ion–ion acoustic instability in multi-ion plasma sheaths

Abstract

The generation of ion-acoustic solitary waves is investigated in a nonuniform multicomponent collisional plasma sheath containing cold ions and Boltzmann electrons to probe the formation and physics of modulation of nonlinear ion-acoustic waves. The new model for the plasma is adapted to include the effects of ion production-loss and momentum loss terms due to ion-neutral collisions, and implementation related to space and laboratory plasma applications are discussed. The discrete modes, the instability conditions and the growth rate of the streaming instability with the effect of the present plasma parameters are calculated based on the approximate but yet precise complex dispersion relation. The marginal stability curve, characterized by mode bifurcation, cutoff, and complex fold point, indicates a growth rate of a few percents of effective plasma frequency. The damping of ion-acoustic is affected by heavy neutrals, and its maximum rate found near the ion-neutral collision frequency. The variable-coefficient Korteweg-de Vries equation is derived via reductive perturbation method to govern the dynamics of small- as well as large-amplitude solitons. It is found that the propagating nonlinear coherent structures through the created ion phase-space vortices lead to ion trapping and acceleration, and the modulation of ion-acoustic instabilities in the turbulent region. The effect of ion streaming motion on the driven solitons and modulation instability for the variable-coefficient Korteweg-de Vries equation is numerically investigated in detail. The theoretical results can be applied to the observation of electrostatic waves in space plasmas, in industrial pair-ion plasmas as well as in laboratory dusty plasmas.