ELECTRON HOLES AND THEIR ROLE IN THE DYNAMICS OF CURRENT-CARRYING WEAKLY COLLISIONAL PLASMAS .1. IMMOBILE IONS

Solutions of the Vlasov-Fokker-Planck-Poisson system in a current-carr ying plasma are analysed theoretically and numerically in the collisio nless and weakly collisional approximations. The class of electron hol es is extended, and new solitary electron hole and hump equilibria are found. Numerical solutions of the full time-dependent self-consistent problem are presented that show the non-existence of structural dissi pative equilibria as long as ions are treated as an immobile backgroun d.