Nonplanar ion-acoustic solitary and cnoidal waves in a non-Maxwellian plasma: Study on nonplanar (modified) Kawahara equation

Abstract

This study aims to examine the properties of the nonplanar (cylindrical and spherical) ion-acoustic solitary waves (SWs) and cnoidal waves (CWs) in a collisionless, unmagnetized electron-ion (EI) plasma having a Cairns–Tsallis distribution for the electrons. This study is structured around two main lines. The first trend involves deriving the nonplanar Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) equation by utilizing the method of reductive perturbation (MRP). This equation describes small-amplitude (non)planar acoustic waves (AWs). Furthermore, the nonplanar Kawahara equation (KE) is formulated to examine the significant magnitude of planar and nonplanar SWs and CWs. The current plasma model supports compressive and rarefactive IA solitary and cnoidal structures, depending upon the associated physical factors such as the nonextensive parameter (nonextensivity) and nonthermal parameter (nonthermality). When the plasma compositions reach some critical values, such as the critical value of nonthermality, the coefficient of the quadratic nonlinear term vanishes. Hence, both nonplanar modified KdV (mKdV) equation and modified KE (mKE) with cubic nonlinearity are derived to accurately depict the dynamics of both small and large amplitudes of nonplanar SWs and CWs and any other structures related to this family of evolution equations. The influences of the nonextensivity and nonthermality on the profile of (non)planar KdV soliton and the (non)planar Kawahara SWs and CWs are numerically examined using some semi-analytical and numerical approximations. Also, the impact of the nonextensivity on the profile of (non)planar mKdV soliton and the (non)planar modified Kawahara SWs and CWs is reported. It is tracked down that the variety of different plasma parameters significantly alters the characteristic properties of the small and large amplitude ion-acoustic waves (IAWs) discussed by the nonplanar KdV-type equations.