Other
Scientific paper
Jul 2002
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2002phdt........10c&link_type=abstract
Thesis (PhD). UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, Source DAI-B 63/01, p. 324, Jul 2002, 75 pages.
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12
Scientific paper
In this thesis, the theory of one-dimensional Berstein- Greene-Kruskal (BGK) electron solitary waves has been studied and extended to three dimensions. We find that the positive core of a 1D BGK electron solitary wave is screened by electrons trapped and oscillating inside the solitary wave potential, and not achieved by the thermal screening from ambient electrons as previously thought. An important consequence of this new finding is that the size of 1D BGK electron solitary waves need not be larger than the Debye length. Another finding is that the relationship between the solitary potential amplitude and width is governed by an inequality rather than an equality. This inequality resolves the discrepancy in the width-amplitude relations found earlier by Turikov [1] and Schamel [2]. The extension to three-dimensional space is accomplished by incorporating three-dimensional electric interaction for magnetized plasmas assuming the gyroradii of electrons are much smaller than all other relevant scale lengths. This permits us to construct azimuthally symmetric BGK electron solitary waves. The solutions here predict that the size of the azimuthally symmetric solitary waves can be smaller than one Debye length (as in the 1D case), and show that the solitary waves with Gaussian potentials have to be either spherical or elongated along the magnetic field. For both the spherical and parallel elongated cases, the relationship between the scale sizes and the potential amplitude is of an inequality type. The inequality indicates that the parallel width-amplitude relation depends on the perpendicular size. This dependence, together with observational data, can yield an estimate of the typical perpendicular size of the observed solitary waves, and an estimate of the amount of electrostatic energy that is transported by the solitary waves. The last theory developed in this thesis concerns the 3D solitary waves in unmagnetized plasmas. This theory is relevant for plasmas in vanishing magnetic fields or in field reversal regions where the magnetic field is zero. We open both the velocity and position space to 3D, and solve the Vlasov-Poisson equations. We find that positive-potential pulse solitary wave solutions do exist, but there does not exist a physical parameter range for the solutions to be physical. The non-existence of a physical solution is attributed to the collisionless screening processes in 3D plasmas.
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