Landau damping of long wavelength ion acoustic waves in a collision-free plasma with a gravity field

Abstract

Ion acoustic waves propagating in a collision-free gravity-supported one-dimeiisional plasma are studied, including conditions where the wavelength is of the order of the scale height of the equilibrium plasma. It turns out that the fluid dynamic steepening tendency of waves propagating in the direction of decreasing density is overcome by Landau damping up to wavelengths of the order of the scale height or even larger, depending on the ratio of the electron and the ion temperatures.