Formation of dispersive shock waves in evolution of a two-temperature collisionless plasma

Abstract

The nonlinear dynamics of pulses in a two-temperature collisionless plasma with formation of dispersion shock waves is studied. An analytical description is given for arbitrary form of an initial disturbance with smooth enough density profile on a uniform density background. For large time after the wave breaking moment dispersive shock waves are formed. Motion of their edges is studied in framework of Gurevich-Pitaevskii theory and Whitham theory of modulations. The analytical results are compared with numerical solution.