Phase Mixing of Large Amplitude Relativistic Electron Plasma Oscillation With Inhomogeneous Ion Background

TL;DR

This paper investigates how inhomogeneous ion backgrounds and relativistic effects influence phase mixing in large amplitude plasma oscillations, revealing that ion density variations and electron mass changes significantly alter wave breaking times.

Contribution

It introduces an approximate solution for relativistic plasma waves in inhomogeneous ion backgrounds, highlighting the effects of ion density and electron mass variations on phase mixing.

Findings

Ion density inhomogeneity affects phase mixing timing.

Relativistic electron mass variation modifies wave breaking.

Approximate solutions in weakly relativistic regime obtained.

Abstract

Phase mixing of relativistic large amplitude nonlinear plasma wave in presence of a time independent space periodic ion density profile has been investigated. Inhomogeneous ion along with the relativistic variation of electron mass make the characteristic frequency of the wave to acquire a space dependency and thereby it breaks at arbitrarily small amplitude due to phase mixing. An approximate space time dependent solution is obtained in the weakly relativistic limit by Bogoliuboff and Kryloff method of averaging. We find that the change in the ion density perturbation and also the relativistic electron mass variation have significant effect in modifying the time at which phase mixing occurs.