Strongly nonlinear waves in capillary electrophoresis

In capillary electrophoresis, sample ions migrate along a microcapillary filled with a background electrolyte under the influence of an applied electric field. If the sample concentration is sufficiently high, the electrical conductivity in the sample zone could differ significantly from the background. Under such conditions, the local migration velocity of sample ions becomes concentration-dependent, resulting in a nonlinear wave that exhibits shocklike features. If the nonlinearity is weak, the sample concentration profile, under certain simplifying assumptions, can be shown to obey Burgers' equation [Ghosal and Chen, Bull. Math. Biol. 72, 2047 (2010)], which has an exact analytical solution for arbitrary initial condition. In this paper, we use a numerical method to study the problem in the more general case where the sample concentration is not small in comparison to the concentration of background ions. In the case of low concentrations, the numerical results agree with the weakly nonlinear theory presented earlier, but at high concentrations, the wave evolves in a way that is qualitatively different.