Ion motion and finite temperature effect on relativistic strong plasma waves

Abstract

The influence of motion of ions and electron temperature on nonlinear one-dimensional plasma waves with velocity close to the speed of light in vacuum is investigated. It is shown that although the wave-breaking field weakly depends on the mass of ions, the nonlinear relativistic wavelength essentially changes. The nonlinearity leads to the increase of the strong plasma wavelength, while the motion of ions leads to the decrease of the wavelength. Both the hydrodynamic approach and kinetic one, based on Vlasov-Poisson equations, are used to investigate the relativistic strong plasma waves in a warm plasma. The existence of relativistic solitons in a thermal plasma is predicted.