Solitary and Periodic Waves in Collisionless Plasmas: The Adlam-Allen Model Revisited

Abstract

We consider the Adlam-Allen (AA) system of partial differential equations which, arguably, is the first model that was introduced to describe solitary waves in the context of propagation of hydrodynamic disturbances in collisionless plasmas. Here, we identify the solitary waves of the model by implementing a dynamical systems approach. The latter suggests that the model also possesses periodic wave solutions --which reduce to the solitary wave in the limiting case of infinite period-- as well as rational solutions which are obtained herein. In addition, employing a long-wave approximation via a relevant multiscale expansion method, we establish the asymptotic reduction of the AA system to the Korteweg-de Vries equation. Such a reduction, is not only another justification for the above solitary wave dynamics, but also may offer additional insights for the emergence of other possible plasma waves. Direct numerical simulations are performed for the study of multiple solitary waves and their pairwise interactions. The stability of solitary waves is discussed in terms of potentially relevant criteria, while the robustness of spatially periodic wave solutions is touched upon by our numerical experiments.