Study of trapping effect on ion-acoustic solitary waves based on a fully kinetic simulation approach

Abstract

A fully kinetic simulation approach, treating each plasma component based on the Vlasov equation, is adopted to study the disintegration of an initial density perturbation into a number of ion-acoustic solitary waves (IASWs) in the presence of the trapping effect of electrons. The nonlinear fluid theory developed by Schamel [Plasma Phys. 13, 491 (1971); J. Plasma Phys. 7, 1 (1972); Plasma Phys. 14, 905 (1972); J. Plasma Phys. 9, 377 (1973); Phys. Scr. 20, 306 (1979)] has identified three separate regimes of ion-acoustic solitary waves based on the trapping parameter. Here, the disintegration process and the resulting self-consistent IASWs are studied in a wide range of trapping parameters covering all the three regimes continuously. The dependency of features such as the time of disintegration, the number, speed, and size of IASWs on the trapping parameter are focused upon. It is shown that an increase in this parameter slows down the propagation of IASWs while decreases their sizes in the phase space. These features of IASWs tend to saturate for large values of trapping parameters. The disintegration time shows a more complicated behavior than what was predicted by the theoretical approach. Also for the case of trapping parameters bigger than one, propagation of IASWs is observed in contrast with the theoretical predictions. The kinetic simulation results unveil a smooth and well-defined dependency of solitary waves' features on the trapping parameter, showing the possibility of bridging all the three regimes. Finally, it is shown that for β around zero, the electron phase space structure of the accompanying vortex stays symmetric. The effect of the electron-to-ion temperature ratio on the disintegration and the propagation of IASWs are considered as a benchmarking test of the simulation code (in the nonlinear regime).