Effect of ion drift on shock waves in an un-magnetized multi-ion plasma

Abstract

We investigate the effect of the drift velocity of lighter ions on shock waves in an unmagnetized multi-component plasma. Solar origin hot electrons and lighter ions, positively and negatively charged heavier ions and cometary origin colder electrons form the multicomponent plasma. Using the reductive perturbation technique, we have derived the KdVB (Korteweg-deVries-Burgers) equation and its shock wave solution is plotted for different plasma parameters relevant to comet Halley. We find that the strength of the shock profile decreases with increasing drift velocities of the lighter ions and kappa indices of the two components of electrons. On the other hand, the amplitude of the shock increases with increasing kinematic viscosities and densities of the lighter ions. Also, different coefficients of the KdVB equation are strongly affected by the drift velocities of the lighter ions.

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“…33 There are a number of observations showing the existence of nonlinear waves at different comets. [34][35][36][37][38][39] Cometary missions Giotto and Vega-1 found structures of sub and bow shocks at comet Halley. 40 Kennel et al, 41 discussed different plasma waves in the shock interaction regions at comet Giacobini-Zinner.…”