Obliquely propagating electromagnetic excitations in dissipative plasmas with relativistically degenerate electrons

Abstract

In this paper, we have investigated the formation of obliquely propagating magnetoacoustic shock structures in dense dissipative plasmas with relativistically degenerate electrons. Using the reductive perturbation technique, we have derived the nonlinear Kadomtsev-Petviashvilli-Burgers (KPB) equation for both fast and slow magnetoacoustic modes. We have explored the non relativistic and ultrarelativistic limits for degenerate electrons for both the modes and highlighted the differences in propagation characteristics of their respective shock structures. We have also studied the limiting cases of KPB in one dimension for both the fast and slow modes. Interestingly, it has been found that unlike the other cases, the one dimensional Burgers equation for the fast mode changes the nature of the shock waves. It has been explained in the paper that this happens owing to the change of sign of the nonlinearity coefficient. Published by AIP Publishing