Decay of solitons in an isotropic collisionless quasineutral plasma with isothermal pressure

Abstract

Soliton-type solutions of the complete unreduced system of transport equations describing the plane-parallel motions of an isotropic collisionless quasineutral plasma in a magnetic field with constant ion and electron temperatures are studied. The regions of the physical parameters for fast and slow magnetosonic branches, where solitons and generalized solitary waves—nonlocal soliton structures in the form of a soliton “core” with asymptotic behavior at infinity in the form of a periodic low-amplitude wave—exist, are determined. In the range of parameters where solitons are replaced by generalized solitary waves, soliton-like disturbances are subjected to decay whose mechanisms are qualitatively different for slow and fast magnetosonic waves. A specific feature of the decay of such disturbances for fast magnetosonic waves is that the energy of the disturbance decreases primarily as a result of the quasistationary emission of a resonant periodic wave of the same nature. Similar disturbances in the form of a soliton core of a slow magnetosonic generalized solitary wave essentially do not emit resonant modes on the Alfvén branch but they lose energy quite rapidly because of continuous emission of a slow magnetosonic wave. Possible types of shocks which are formed by two types of existing soliton solutions (solitons and generalized solitary waves) are examined in the context of such solutions.