Interaction of Nonplanar Electron-Acoustic Shock Waves with Superthermal Hot Electrons

The head on collision (HoC) of two electron acoustic shock wave in cylindrical/spherical geometries having kappa-distributed hot electrons is investigated. Extended Poincare-Lighthill-Kuo (PLK) method and weighted residual approach was applied for this problem in a fruitful manner to find approximate small-amplitude solutions of the nonplanar system, which are rare in literature. Adopting these methods, it is shown that the dynamics of interaction of shock waves depends significantly on the geometry factor m. The influence of relevant physical parameters such as superthermal distribution of electrons, kinematic viscosity, and density ratio on the phase shifts of the shock structure is examined. The findings suggest that shock interactions are distinct from those of solitons. It is also observed that the dispersion and dissipation of the colliding nonlinear structure have a combined role in the occurrence and modification of trajectory variations.