An exact electrostatic shock solution for a collisionless plasma

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
An exact solution to the steady-state Vlasov equations and Poisson's equation for a one-dimensional plasma of electrons and protons is obtained by splitting the energy equation into two integral equations for the trapped particle distributions. This solution has the properties that the number densities and electric potential are moiiotonic functions of space and do most of their changing over a distance of the order of the Debye length for electrons. The distributions are everywhere differentiable in phase space and are Maxwellian-like, and in terms of elementary functions. Evidence is given to support stability for restricted shock strengths.