Dissipative kinetic Alfven solitary waves resulting from viscosity

Abstract

Nonlinear small-amplitude kinetic Alfven solitary waves (KASWs) are investigated with their "anomalous" kinetic viscosity effect on electrons. It is found that the structure of a hump-type KASW solution develops into a shock-type (or double layer) KASW solution for large amplitude KASWs when viscosity exists. For small amplitude KASWs, the Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) equation with an approximate pseudopotential was solved, and it is found that the hump-type KASWs develop into oscillating shock-type (kink-type) KASWs. It is also found that the oscillating scale of this structure is related to the propagation velocity and plasma beta, while the damping scale is inversely proportional to the viscosity.