Solitary and rogue waves in Fermi-Dirac plasmas: relativistic degeneracy effects

Abstract

Ion acoustic (IA) solitary and rogue waves are studied in an unmagnetized plasma consisting of non-degenerate warm ions, relativistically degenerate electrons and positrons. By using the reductive perturbation technique, the evolution of IA solitary waves is described by the Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) equation. However, when the frequency of the carrier wave is much smaller than the ion plasma frequency then the KdV equation is also used to study the nonlinear evolution of modulationally unstable modified IA wavepackets through the derivation of nonlinear Schrodinger equation. It is found that the characteristics of the IA solitary and rogue waves are substantially influenced by the intrinsic plasma parameters. The relevance of the present investigation involving IA solitary and rogue waves in astrophysical plasma environments is also highlighted.