Rarefaction Shock Waves in Collisionless Plasma with Electronic Beam

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that an electronic beam in collisionless plasma can generate supersonic ion-acoustic rarefaction shock waves, expanding understanding of wave phenomena in plasma physics.

Contribution

It introduces the existence of rarefaction shock waves in collisionless plasma driven by an electronic beam, a novel insight in plasma wave dynamics.

Findings

Electronic beam induces supersonic ion-acoustic rarefaction shocks.

These waves are analogous to gasdynamic rarefaction shocks.

Complementary to known compression shock waves in plasma.

Abstract

We show that an electronic beam passing through the collisionless plasma of the "cold" ions and the "hot" Boltzmann electrons can give rise to the propagation of the supersonic ion-acoustic rarefaction shock waves. These waves are analogous to those predicted by Zeldovich [5] in gasodynamics and complementary to the ion-acoustic compression shock waves in collisionless plasma described by Sagdeev [3].