Effect of Landau damping on kinetic Alfven and ion-acoustic solitary waves in a magnetized nonthermal plasma with warm ions

The evolution equations describing both kinetic Alfven wave and ion-acoustic wave in a nonthermal magnetized plasma with warm ions including weak nonlinearity and weak dispersion with the effect of Landau damping have been derived. These equations reduce to two coupled equations constituting the KdV-ZK (Korteweg-de Vries-Zakharov-Kuznetsov) equation for both kinetic Alfven wave and ion-acoustic wave, including an extra term accounting for the effect of Landau damping. When the coefficient of the nonlinear term of the evolution equation for ion-acoustic wave vanishes, the nonlinear behavior of ion-acoustic wave, including the effect of Landau damping, is described by two coupled equations constituting the modified KdV-ZK (MKdV-ZK) equation, including an extra term accounting for the effect of Landau damping. It is found that there is no effect of Landau damping on the solitary structures of the kinetic Alfven wave. Both the macroscopic evolution equations for the ion-acoustic wave admits solitary wave solutions, the former having a sech(2) profile and the latter having a sech profile. In either case, it is found that the amplitude of the ion-acoustic solitary wave decreases slowly with time. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.