Physical aspects of cnoidal waves in non-thermal electron-beam plasma systems

Abstract

Abstract The effects of electron beam and non-thermal electrons on ion-acoustic cnoidal waves (IACWs) structure in a two-fluid plasma system are investigated. A Kappa-Cairns type distribution is assumed for the background electrons. The Korteweg–de Vries (K-dV) equation is obtained by employing reductive perturbation technique and the analytical solution of K-dV equation is derived by employing the Sagdeev pseudo-potential approach. It is seen that in the presence of the electron beam, four modes can exist in this plasma model. In this study, it is observed that only two modes are real in all cases. Furthermore, it is found that the characteristics of the ion-acoustic cnoidal wave depend strongly on the electron beam parameters (via ν and U 0 ) as well as the non-thermal indexes for the plasma electrons (via κ and α ).