Dey R, Banerjee G, Misra AP, Bhowmik C. Ion-acoustic solitons in a relativistic Fermi plasma at finite temperature.
Sci Rep 2024;
14:26872. [PMID:
39505915 PMCID:
PMC11541595 DOI:
10.1038/s41598-024-75051-7]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/16/2024] [Accepted: 10/01/2024] [Indexed: 11/08/2024] Open
Abstract
The theory of ion-acoustic solitons in nonrelativistic fully degenerate plasmas and nonrelativistic and ultra-relativistic degenerate plasmas at low temperatures is known. We consider a multi-component relativistic degenerate electron-positron-ion plasma at finite temperatures. Specifically, we focus on the intermediate region where the particle's thermal energy ( k B T ) and the rest mass energy ( m c 2 ) do not differ significantly, i.e.,k B T ∼ m c 2 . However, the Fermi energy ( k B T F ) is larger than the thermal energy and the normalized chemical energy ( ξ = μ / k B T ) is positive and finite. Two different parameter regimes with β ≡ k B T / m c 2 < 1 and β > 1 , relevant for astrophysical plasmas, are defined, and the existence of small amplitude ion-acoustic solitons in these regimes are studied, including the critical cases where the known KdV (Korteweg-de Vries) theory fails. We show that while the solitons with both the positive (compressive) and negative (rarefactive) potentials coexist in the case of β < 1 , only compressive solitons can exist in the other regime ( β > 1 ) . Furthermore, while the rarefactive solitons within the parameter domains of β and ξ can evolve with increasing amplitude and hence increasing energy, the energy of compressive solitons reaches a steady state.
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