Am. Hamza, NONLINEAR-ELECTRON-RESPONSE IMPACT ON THE EVOLUTION OF ION-ACOUSTIC-WAVE PACKETS IN A MAGNETIZED PLASMA, Physical review. E, Statistical physics, plasmas, fluids, and related interdisciplinary topics, 48(3), 1993, pp. 2055-2066
It has been argued by a number of authors that the development of inte
rmittent, localized ion fluctuations in a two-species electron-ion dri
fting ummagnetized plasma is possible. Compressive ion-acoustic solito
ns can develop in such a plasma, but not rarefactive ones. In the case
of a strongly magnetized two-component plasma where intermittent elec
trostatic ion-acoustic and ion-cyclotron wave packets can be excited,
we show that stationary shock solutions can exist. Their existence is
due to the electron nonlinearity rather than the ion nonlinearity as i
s the case when ion nonlinearities are included, as is often referred
to as Korteweg-de Vries solitons. We also show that there is no statio
nary solution when the Zakharov-Kuznetsov boundary conditions are impo
sed. We analyze the stability of the shock solution and show that it i
s possible to trigger a nonlinear instability in the case where a rare
factive pulse is chosen as an initial condition. A nonlinear criterion
for growth is developed.