Drift solitary structures in inhomogeneous degenerate quantum plasmas with trapped electrons

Abstract

In the present work, we have considered the non linear effects due to trapped electrons in an inhomogeneous degenerate quantum plasma. The formation of drift solitary structures has been investigated for both fully and partially degenerate plasmas. The Sagdeev potential approach has been employed to obtain arbitrary amplitude solitary struc tures. Interestingly, for a fixed value of density, not only compressive but rarefactive solitary structures have been ob tained for a certain temperature range. Furthermore, it has been observed that the drift solitary structures exist only for the case when the drift velocity is smaller than the velocity of the nonlinear structure. The theoretical results obtained have been analyzed numerically for the parameters typically found in white dwarfs and the relevance of the results with regard to white dwarf asteroseismology is also pointed out.