Nonlinearly interacting trapped particle solitons in collisionless plasmas

Abstract

The formulation of collective waves in collisionless plasmas is complicated by the kinetic effects produced by the resonant particles, capable of responding to the smallest of the amplitude disturbance. The dispersive plasma manifests this response by generating coherent nonlinear structures associated with phase-space vortices, or holes, at very small amplitudes. The nonlinear interaction between solitary electron phase-space holes is studied in the electron acoustic regime of a collisionless plasma using Vlasov simulations. Evolution of the analytic trapped particle solitary solutions is examined, observing them propagate stably, preserve their identity across strong mutual interactions in adiabatic processes, and display close correspondence with observable processes in nature.