Modeling of modified electron-acoustic solitary waves in a relativistic degenerate plasma

Abstract

The modeling of a theoretical and numerical study on the nonlinear propagation of modified electron-acoustic (mEA) solitary waves has been carried out in an unmagnetized, collisionless, relativistic, degenerate quantum plasma (containing non-relativistic degenerate inertial cold electrons, both non-relativistic and ultra-relativistic degenerate hot electron and inertial positron fluids, and positively-charged static ions). A reductive perturbation technique is used to derive the planar and the nonplanar Korteweg-de Vries (K-dV) equations, which admit a localized wave solution for the solitary profile. The solitary wave’s characteristics are found to have been influenced significantly forin the non-relativistic and the ultra-relativistic limits. The mEA solitary waves are also found to have been significantly modified due to the effects of the degenerate pressure and the number densities of this dense plasma’s constituents. The properties of the planar K-dV solitary wave are quite different from those of the nonplanar K-dV solitary wave. The relevance of our results to astrophysical objects (like white dwarfs and neutron stars), which are of scientific interest, is briefly mentioned.