Nonlinear wave-wave interactions in quantum plasmas

TL;DR

This paper investigates nonlinear wave interactions in quantum plasmas, revealing how quantum effects influence chaos, soliton formation, and turbulence through the quantum Zakharov equations.

Contribution

It introduces a theoretical analysis of quantum Langmuir and ion-acoustic wave interactions, highlighting quantum tunneling effects on wave dynamics and chaos transition.

Findings

Quantum tunneling increases the length scale for instability.

Quantum effects lead to earlier wave pattern collisions and fusion.

Multiple solitary patterns evolve into spatiotemporal chaos.

Abstract

Wave-wave interaction in plasmas is a topic of important research since the 16th century. The formation of Langmuir solitons through the coupling of high-frequency (hf) Langmuir and low-frequency (lf) ion-acoustic waves, is one of the most interesting features in the context of turbulence in modern plasma physics. Moreover, quantum plasmas, which are ubiquitous in ultrasmall electronic devices, micromechanical systems as well as in dense astrophysical environments are a topic of current research. In the light of notable interests in such quantum plasmas, we present here a theoretical investigation on the nonlinear interaction of quantum Langmuir waves (QLWs) and quantum ion-acoustic waves (QIAWs), which are governed by the one-dimensional quantum Zakharov equations (QZEs). It is shown that a transition to spatiotemporal chaos (STC) occurs when the length scale of excitation of linear modes is larger than that of the most unstable ones. Such length scale is, however, to be larger (compared to the classical one) in presence of the quantum tunneling effect. The latter induces strong QIAW emission leading to the occurrence of collision and fusion among the patterns at an earlier time than the classical case. Moreover, numerical simulation of the QZEs reveals that many solitary patterns can be excited and saturated through the modulational instability (MI) of unstable harmonic modes. In a longer time, these solitons are seen to appear in the state of STC due to strong QIAW emission as well as by the collision and fusion in stochastic motion. The energy in the system is thus strongly redistributed, which may switch on the onset of Langmuir turbulence in quantum plasmas.