A study is presented for the oblique propagation of ion acoustic cnoidal waves in a magnetized plasma consisting of cold ions and two temperature superthermal electrons modelled by kappa-type distributions. Using the reductive perturbation method, the nonlinear Korteweg de-Vries equation is derived, which further gives the solutions with a special type of cnoidal elliptical functions. Both compressive and rarefactive structures are found for these cnoidal waves. Nonlinear periodic cnoidal waves are explained in terms of plasma parameters depicting the Sagdeev potential and the phase curves. It is found that the density ratio of hot electrons to ions μ significantly modifies compressive/refractive wave structures. Furthermore, the combined effects of superthermality of cold and hot electrons κc,κh, cold to hot electron temperature ratio σ, angle of propagation and ion cyclotron frequency ωci have been studied in detail to analyze the height and width of compressive/refractive cnoidal waves. The findings in the present study could have important implications in understanding the physics of electrostatic wave structures in the Saturn's magnetosphere where two temperature superthermal electrons are present.

It is well known that the rotation of a magnetic island in the reference frame of plasma guiding centers generates parallel electron current outside the island, which is induced by the geodesic curvature of a magnetic field (Smolyakov et al 2007 Phys. Rev. Lett. 99 055002). It is shown in the present work that the surface part of this current located at the island separatrix can drive a pair of counter-propagating, tearing-parity, beta-induced Alfvén eigenmodes, which have the same helicity as that of the magnetic island and form a standing wave in the island frame. These Alfvénic modes can accompany tearing activity in tokamak discharges without energetic particles.

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Generation of compressional Alfvénic rogue and solitary waves in magnetohydrodynamic plasmas is investigated. Dispersive effect caused by non-ideal electron inertia currents perpendicular to the ambient magnetic field can balance the nonlinear steepening of waves leading to the formation of a soliton. The reductive perturbation method is used to obtain a Korteweg–de Vries (KdV) equation describing the evolution of the solitary wave. The height of a soliton is proportional to the soliton speed “U” and inversely proportional to plasma “β” (ratio of plasma thermal pressure to pressure of the confining magnetic field) and the width of soliton is proportional to the electron inertial length. KdV equation is used to study the nonlinear evolution of modulationally unstable compressional Alfvénic wavepackets via the nonlinear Schrödinger equation. The characteristics of rogue wave influenced by plasma “β” and the electron inertial length are described.

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