Abstract
The stability of contact discontinuities formed by the relaxation of two Maxwellian plasmas with different number densities but the same plasma thermal pressure is studied by means of a one-dimensional electrostatic full Vlasov simulation. Our simulation runs with various combinations of ion-to-electron ratios of the high-density and low-density regions showed that transition layers of density and temperature without jump in the plasma thermal pressure are obtained when the electron temperatures in the high-density and low-density regions are almost equal to each other. However, the stable structure of the contact discontinuity with a sharp transition layer on the Debye scale is not maintained. It is suggested that non-Maxwellian velocity distributions are necessary for the stable structure of contact discontinuities.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 102107 |
Journal | Physics of Plasmas |
Volume | 26 |
Issue number | 10 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 2019/10/01 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Condensed Matter Physics