Coupled whistler and ion-acoustic mode propagation in two-electron-temperature plasmas

The nonlinear coupling between whistler and ion-acoustic modes in a plasma having bi-Maxwellian distributed electrons is considered. For stationary propagation, the coupled waves lead to a novel nonlinear structure which has a triple-hump profile for the whistler field intensity. In the critical parameter regime (Delta = 3), only supersonic propagation of the coupled modes is allowed. In other regimes, three integrable cases of the coupled mode propagation have been identified. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.