Ion acoutstic solitons in the earth's space environment

What is it about?

Solitons are non-linear structures that do not dissipate energy over large distances. Solitons have been observed in many different branches of physics including acoustics, optics, fluid dynamics and plasma physics. Solitons have been observed in earth's space environment with the Fast Auroral Snapshot spacecraft. This paper shows how solitons can form in the space environment using a numerical simulations and compares observational results with simulations.

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Why is it important?

Solitons represent a basic class of non-linear structures that have been observed in laboratory and space plasmas. They have been studied for decades with fluid simulations and analytic theory. We studied for the first time a plasma kinetic approach to the study of solitons which allows for direct comparison with spacecraft data sets.