Compressional Alfvenic rogue and solitary waves in magnetohydrodynamic plasmas

Abstract

Generation of compressional Alfvenic rogue and solitary waves in magnetohydrodynamic plasmas is investigated. Dispersive effect caused by non-ideal electron inertia currents perpendicular to the ambient magnetic field can balance the nonlinear steepening of waves leading to the formation of a soliton. The reductive perturbation method is used to obtain a Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) equation describing the evolution of the solitary wave. The height of a soliton is proportional to the soliton speed "U" and inversely proportional to plasma "beta" (ratio of plasma thermal pressure to pressure of the confining magnetic field) and the width of soliton is proportional to the electron inertial length. KdV equation is used to study the nonlinear evolution of modulationally unstable compressional Alfvenic wavepackets via the nonlinear Schrodinger equation. The characteristics of rogue wave influenced by plasma "beta" and the electron inertial length are described. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.