Cumulative displacement induced by a magnetosonic soliton bouncing in a bounded plasma slab

TL;DR

This paper analytically derives the cumulative particle displacement caused by a magnetosonic soliton bouncing within a bounded plasma slab, supported by simulations, revealing how displacement scales with plasma parameters.

Contribution

It introduces an analytical model for particle displacement due to bouncing MS solitons in bounded plasmas, validated by particle-in-cell simulations.

Findings

Displacement scales as light speed over Alfvén velocity.

Analytical results match simulation data.

Displacement accumulates over multiple reflections.

Abstract

The passage of a magnetosonic (MS) soliton in a cold plasma leads to the displacement of charged particles in the direction of a compressive pulse and in the opposite direction of a rarefaction pulse. In the overdense plasma limit, the displacement induced by a weakly nonlinear MS soliton is derived analytically. This result is then used to derive an asymptotic expansion for the displacement resulting from the bouncing motion of a MS soliton reflected back and forth in a vacuum-bounded cold plasma slab. Particles' displacement after the pulse energy has been lost to the vacuum region is shown to scale as the ratio of light speed to Alfv\'en velocity. Results for the displacement after a few MS soliton reflections are corroborated by particle-in-cell simulations.