Role of trapped particles and waves in plasma solitons - theory and application

In this tutorial and review paper, the influence of trapped particles on the propagation of ion acoustic solitons and the role of trapped waves on the propagation of Langmuir solitons is investigated. The classical potential method allows one to construct finite amplitude soliton solutions, and trapping phenomena are found to retard the motion of solitons. Thus, ion acoustic solitons have minimum speed when they are based on an isothermal electron equation of state since this corresponds to 'maximum electron trapping'. The results reveal that the so-called aliasing interactions lead to erroneous solutions. The conservation of invariants does not guarantee the accuracy of a numerical algorithm, although it is needed for its stability. (Auth.)