Solitons in a Convective Motion of a Low-β Plasma. II

Abstract

The present paper shows that in a plane normal to an applied magnetic field, envelope solitary vortices comprising convective cells of small scale propagate through a nonuniform bounded plasma of low β as envelope solitons of a nonlinear Schrödinger equation. It is shown further that the modulational instability is enhanced resonantly for certain wavenumbers and vortices of large scale is excited by the ponderomotive force. Discussions are based on the model equation of Hasegawa and Mima that is the geostrophic vortex equation, and a generation of zonal flows by the Rossby wave is noted.