Reflection of Ion-Acoustic Waves and Solitons

Abstract

A stationary structure of a sheath around a negatively biased grid inserted in a homogeneous plasma and the associated effects on propagation characteristics of ion-acoustic waves are studied with a theory of collisionless plasma. The reductive perterbation method is applied to obtain the reflection coefficient of ion-acoustic waves from the grid. The results are shown to be in good agreement with the experiments by Nishida and Nagasawa.