Head-on collision of ion-acoustic (modified) Korteweg–de Vries solitons in Saturn's magnetosphere plasmas with two temperature superthermal electrons

Abstract

In view of the recent observations by plasma science-spacecraft-voyager and Cassini plasma spectrometer of Saturn's magnetosphere, the interaction between two counter-propagating ion-acoustic (IA) solitons is studied in an unmagnetized plasma consisting of warm adiabatic ions in addition to hot and cold electrons following kappa distribution. The head-on collision of the IA solitons is investigated using the extended Poincare–Lighthill–Kuo technique. Since this model supports both compressive and rarefactive solitons, therefore, the soliton collisions for both Korteweg–de Vries (KdV) and the modified KdV (mKdV) equations are investigated. The corresponding phase shifts after the collision for both these equations are also derived and examined. Furthermore, the effects of different plasma parameters (corresponding to Saturn's magnetosphere), including superthermality, density, and temperature on the colliding soliton profiles and their phase shifts, are examined. It is concluded that the phase shift is smaller when both hot and cold electrons are Maxwellian by comparison with the superthermal case.