Plasma slab expansion into vacuum

Abstract

The problem of collisionless plasma slab expansion into vacuum is solved within a two-temperature hydrodynamic approximation in the dispersionless limit of zero Debye radius. In the framework of such an approach, the solution by the Riemann method provides a quite accurate description of the whole process of plasma dynamics. It is shown that the dispersionless approximation agrees very well with exact numerical solution of the full system of plasma hydrodynamic equations.