Bending of solitons in weak and slowly varying inhomogeneous plasma

TL;DR

This paper investigates how ion acoustic solitons bend in a two-dimensional unmagnetized plasma with weak, slowly varying inhomogeneous ion density, showing that the soliton's phase is affected while its amplitude remains constant.

Contribution

It derives a modified Kadomtsev-Petviashvili equation for inhomogeneous plasma and demonstrates how ion density inhomogeneity causes soliton bending in two dimensions.

Findings

Soliton phase is modified by inhomogeneous ion density

Amplitude of soliton remains constant during bending

Exact solutions illustrate the soliton bending effect

Abstract

Bending of solitons in two dimensional plane is presented in the presence of weak and slowly varying inhomogeneous ion density for the propagation of ion acoustic soliton in unmagnetized cold plasma with isothermal electrons. Using reductive perturbation technique, a modified Kadomtsev- Petviashvili equation is obtained with a chosen unperturbed ion density profile. Exact solution of the equation shows that the phase of the solitary wave gets modified by a function related to the unperturbed inhomogeneous ion density causing the soliton to bend in the two dimensional plane, whereas the amplitude of the soliton remaining constant