Bifurcations of nonlinear ion-acoustic travelling waves in a multicomponent magnetoplasma with superthermal electrons

Abstract

Properties of nonlinear ion-acoustic travelling waves propagating in a three-dimensional multicomponent magnetoplasma system composed of positive ions, negative ions and superthermal electrons are considered. Using the reductive perturbation technique (RPT), the Zkharov-Kuznetsov (ZK) equation is derived. The bifurcation theory of planar dynamical systems is applied to investigate the existence of the solitary wave solutions and the periodic travelling wave solutions of the resulting ZK equation. It is found that both compressive and rarefactive nonlinear ion-acoustic travelling waves strongly depend on the external magnetic field, the unperturbed positive-to-negative ions density ratio, the direction cosine of the wave propagation vector with the Cartesian coordinates, as well as the superthermal electron parameter. The present model may be useful for describing the formation of nonlinear ion-acoustic travelling wave in certain astrophysical scenarios, such as the D and F-regions of the Earth’s ionosphere.