skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Nonplanar solitons collision in ultracold neutral plasmas

Journal Article · · Physics of Plasmas
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4823709· OSTI ID:22220591
; ;  [1];  [2];  [2];  [3]
  1. Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Port Said University, Port Said 42521 (Egypt)
  2. Theoretical Physics Group, Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Damietta University, New Damietta 34517 (Egypt)
  3. Institut für Theoretische Physik, Lehrstuhl IV: Weltraum- und Astrophysik, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, D-44780 Bochum (Germany)

Collisions between two nonplanar ion-acoustic solitons in strongly coupled ultracold neutral plasmas composed of ion fluid and non-Maxwellian (nonthermal or superthermal) electron distributions are investigated. The extended Poincare-Lighthill-Kuo method is used to obtain coupled nonplanar Kortweg-de Vries equations for describing the system. The nonplanar phase shifts after the interaction of the two solitons are calculated. It is found that the properties of the nonplanar colliding solitons and its corresponding phase shifts are different from those in the planar case. The polarity of the colliding solitons strongly depends on the type of the non-Maxwellian electron distributions. A critical nonthermality parameter β{sub c} is identified. For values of β ≤ β{sub c} solitons with double polarity exist, while this behavior cannot occur for superthermal plasmas. The phase shift for nonthermal plasmas increases below β{sub c} for a positive soliton, but it decreases for β > β{sub c} for a negative soliton. For superthermal plasmas, the phase shift enhances rapidly for low values of spectral index κ and higher values of ions effective temperature ratio σ{sub *}. For 2 ≲ κ<10, the phase shift decreases but does not change for κ > 10. The nonlinear structure, as reported here, is useful for controlling the solitons created in forthcoming ultracold neutral plasma experiments.

OSTI ID:
22220591
Journal Information:
Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 20, Issue 9; Other Information: (c) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1070-664X
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English