A study of solitary wave trains generated by injection of a blob into plasmas

Abstract

We have investigated the evolution of consecutive electrostatic solitary waves (ESWs) generated upon injection of a finite-sized blob into plasmas using one-dimensional electrostatic particle-in-cell simulations. Strong charge separation developed at the leading edge of the blob, producing a huge electrostatic potential in which electrons were trapped and heated. Ions were reflected from the boundaries of the blob, forming fast, cold ion beams in the forward and backward directions. The forward ion beams interacted with the hot electrons, which were escaping from the potential developed at the leading edge of the blob, to produce successive ESWs. On the other hand, the backward ion beams formed ion phase space holes as a result of the ion two-stream instability. The present study demonstrates that localized density perturbations in plasmas can be a viable source of consecutive ESWs observed in space. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4759162]