How can slow plasma electron holes exist?

Abstract

One dimensional analysis is presented of solitary positive potential plasma structures whose velocity lies within the range of ion distribution velocities that are strongly populated: so called "slow" electron holes. It is shown that to avoid the self-acceleration of the hole velocity away from ion velocities it must lie within a local minimum in the ion velocity distribution. Quantitative criteria for the existence of stable equilibria are obtained. The background ion distributions required are generally stable to ion-ion modes unless the electron temperature is much higher than the ion temperature. Since slow positive potential solitons are shown not to be possible without a significant contribution from trapped electrons, it seems highly likely that such observed slow potential structures are indeed electron holes.

Revised. Version 2

References in corpus (2)

• Kinetic Electron and Ion Instability of the Lunar Wake Simulated at Physical Mass Ratio
• Ultra slow electron holes in collisionless plasmas: stability at high ion temperature

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Kinetic Solitary Electrostatic Structures in Collisionless Plasma: Phase-Space Holes
• Ion Hole Equilibrium and Dynamics in One Dimension
• Overstability of Plasma Slow Electron Holes
• Asymmetric One-Dimensional Slow Electron Holes
• Investigations of the kinetic ion-acoustic soliton by the Bernstein-Greene-Kruskal integral method