Particle-in-cell simulation of the head-on collision between two ion acoustic solitary waves in plasmas

The head-on collision of two ion acoustic solitary waves in plasmas composed of hot electrons and cold ions has been studied by using the Poincare-Lighthill-Kuo (PLK) perturbation method and one-dimensional Particle-in-Cell (PIC) simulation. Then the phase lags of ion acoustic solitary waves (IASWs) obtained from the two approaches have been compared and discussed. It has been found that: if the amplitudes of both the colliding IASWs are small enough, the phase lags obtained from PLK method are in good agreement with those obtained from PIC simulation. As the amplitudes of IASWs increase, the phase lags from PIC simulation become smaller than the analytical ones from PLK method. Besides, the PIC simulation shows the phase lag of an IASW involved in collision depends not only on the characteristics of the wave it collides with but also on itself, which disagrees with the prediction of the PLK method. Finally, the application scopes of the PLK method in studying both the single IASW and the head-on collisions of IASWs have been studied and discussed, and the latter turns out to be more strict. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.