Particle acceleration by ion-acoustic solitons in plasma

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel particle acceleration mechanism using non-linear ion-acoustic solitons in plasma, where particles gain energy through repeated reflections in shrinking acoustic waves, potentially explaining high-energy solar particles.

Contribution

It presents a new acceleration process involving cylindrical and spherical ion-acoustic solitons described by KdV equations, leading to power-law energy spectra for particles.

Findings

Particles achieve high energies via repeated reflections in shrinking waves

Power-law energy spectra are derived for accelerated particles

Potential explanation for high-energy solar particles

Abstract

We propose a new acceleration mechanism for charged particles by using cylindrical or spherical non-linear acoustic waves propagating in ion-electron plasma. The acoustic wave, which is described by the cylindrical or spherical Kortweg-de Vries equation, grows in its wave height as the wave shrinks to the center. Charged particles confined by the electric potential accompanied with the shrinking wave get energy by repetition of reflections. We obtain power law spectrums of energy for accelerated particles. As an application, we discuss briefly that high energy particles coming from the Sun are produced by the present mechanism.