Stable Langmuir solitons in plasma with diatomic ions

TL;DR

This paper investigates stable Langmuir solitons in plasma with diatomic ions, deriving a new nonlinear Schrödinger equation and exploring their potential formation in atmospheric plasma structures.

Contribution

It introduces a novel cubic-quintic nonlinear Schrödinger equation modeling stable plasma solitons with diatomic ions, and discusses their possible atmospheric applications.

Findings

Derived a new cubic-quintic nonlinear Schrödinger equation.

Numerically demonstrated stable soliton solutions.

Discussed implications for atmospheric plasma experiments.

Abstract

We study stable axially and spherically symmetric spatial solitons in plasma with diatomic ions. The stability of a soliton against the collapse is provided by the interaction of induced electric dipole moments of ions with rapidly oscillating electric field of a plasmoid. We derive the new cubic-quintic nonlinear Schrodinger equation which governs the soliton dynamics and numerically solve it. Then we discuss the possibility of implementation of such plasmoids in realistic atmospheric plasma. In particular, we suggest that spherically symmetric Langmuir solitons, described in the present work, can be excited at the formation stage of long-lived atmospheric plasma structures. The implication of our model for the interpretation of the results of experiments for the plasmoids generation is discussed.