Electron acoustic shock waves in a collisional plasma.
A nonlinear analysis for the finite amplitude electron acoustic wave (EAW) is considered in a collisional plasma. The fluid model is used to describe the two-temperature electron species in a fixed ion background. In general, in electron-ion plasma, the presence of wave nonlinearity, dispersion, and dissipation (arising from fluid viscosity) give rise to the Korteweg-de Vries Burgers (KdVB) equation which exhibits shock wave. In this work, it is shown that the dissipation due to the collision between electron and ion in the presence of collective phenomena (plasma current) can also introduce an anomalous dissipation that causes the Burgers term and thus leads to the generation of electron acoustic shock wave. Both analytical and numerical analysis show the formation of transient shock wave. Relevance of the results are discussed in the context of space plasma.
Department of Instrumentation Science, Jadavpur University, Kolkata-700 032, India. manjistha.dutta@gmail.com
Manjistha
M
Dutta
Samiran
S
Ghosh
Nikhil
N
Chakrabarti