Radially ingoing and outgoing dispersive and dissipative structures in electron‐ion plasmas in the presence of electron trapping

Abstract

In this article, non‐linear propagation of ingoing and outgoing electrostatic waves on the ion time scale in an unmagnetized, non‐relativistic electron‐ion (ei) plasma in the presence of warm ions, ion kinematic viscosity, and trapped Maxwellian electrons was examined in a non‐planar geometry. In the weak non‐linearity limit, modified soliton and shock equations were derived with the inclusion of electron trapping in cylindrical and spherical geometries. The finite difference method was used to solve all these equations in the non‐planar geometries using the planar versions of these equations as an initial input. The results were compared with their counterparts with quadratic non‐linearity and the main differences were expounded. It was shown that the spatio‐temporal scales over which the shocks form for the non‐planar trapped Burgers equation are much shorter by comparison with the shocks admitted by the non‐planar trapped Korteweg de Vries Burgers equation. It was also found that unlike their non‐linear shock counterparts, the solitary structures admitted by the non‐planar trapped Korteweg de Vries equation exhibit a phase shift.