Electron holes and their role in the dynamics of current-carrying weakly collisional plasmas .1. Immobile ions

Solutions of the Vlasov-Fokker-Planck-Poisson system in a current-carrying plasma are analysed theoretically and numerically in the collisionless and weakly collisional approximations. The class of electron holes is extended, and new solitary electron hole and hump equilibria are found. Numerical solutions of the full time-dependent self-consistent problem are presented that show the non-existence of structural dissipative equilibria as long as ions are treated as an immobile background.