Ion-acoustic Gardner solitons in a four-component nonextensive multi-ion plasma

Abstract

The nonlinear propagation of ion-acoustic (IA) solitary waves (SWs) in a four-component non-extensive multi-ion plasma system containing inertial positively charged light ions, negatively charged heavy ions, as well as noninertial nonextensive electrons and positrons has been theoretically investigated. The reductive perturbation method has been employed to derive the nonlinear equations, namely, Korteweg−deVries (KdV), modified KdV (mKdV), and Gardner equations. The basic features (viz. polarity, amplitude, width, etc.) of Gardner solitons are found to exist beyond the KdV limit and these IA Gardner solitons are qualitatively different from the KdV and mKdV solitons. It is observed that the basic features of IA SWs are modified by various plasma parameters (viz. electron and positron nonextensivity, electron number density to ion number density, and electron temperature to positron temperature, etc.) of the considered plasma system. The results obtained from this theoretical investigation may be useful in understanding the basic features of IA SWs propagating in both space and laboratory plasmas.