The existence of electron-acoustic shock waves and their interactions in a non-Maxwellian plasma with q-nonextensive distributed electrons

Abstract

We present a theoretical investigation for the nonlinear interaction between electron-acoustic shock waves in a nonextensive two-electron plasma. The interaction is governed by a pair of Korteweg-de Vries-Burgers equations. We focus on studying the colliding effects on the propagation of shock waves, more specifically, we have studied the effects of plasma parameters, i.e., the nonextensive parameter q, the “hot” to “cold” electron number density ratio α, and the normalized electron kinematic viscosity η0 on the trajectory changes (phase shifts) of shock waves. It is found that there are trajectory changes (phase shifts) for both colliding shock waves in the present plasma system. We also noted that the nonlinearity has no decisive effect on the trajectory changes, the occurrence of trajectory changes may be due to the combined role played by the dispersion and dissipation of the nonlinear structure. Our theoretical study may be beneficial to understand the propagation and interaction of nonlinear electrostatic waves and may brings a possibility to develop the nonlinear theory of electron-acoustic waves in astrophysical plasma systems.