Ion-acoustic double layers in magnetized positive-negative ion plasmas with nonthermal electrons

Abstract

The nonlinear ion-acoustic double layers (IADLs) in a warm magnetoplasma with positive-negative ions and nonthermal electrons are investigated. For this purpose, the hydrodynamic equations for the positive-negative ions, nonthermal electron density distribution, and the Poisson equation are used to derive a modified Zakharov–Kuznetsov (MZK) equation, in the small amplitude regime. It is found that compressive and rarefactive IADLs strongly depend on the mass and density ratios of the negative-to-positive ions as well as the nonthermal electron parameter. Also, it is shown that there are one critical value for the density ratio of the negative-to-positive ions (ν), the ratio between unperturbed electron-to-positive ion density (μ), and the nonthermal electron parameter (β), which decide the existence of positive and negative IADLs. The present study is applied to examine the small amplitude nonlinear IADL excitations for the \((\mathrm{H}^{+}, \mathrm{O}_{2}^{-})\) and (H+,H−) plasmas, where they are found in the D- and F-regions of the Earth’s ionosphere. This investigation should be helpful in understanding the salient features of the nonlinear IADLs in either space or laboratory plasmas where two distinct groups of ions and non-Boltzmann distributed electrons are present.