Propagation of cylindrical and spherical electron-acoustic solitary wave packets in unmagnetized plasma

Investigation of nonlinear wave modulation of electron-acoustic solitary wave packets in planar as well as nonplanar geometry is carried out for an unmagnetized two temperature plasma composed of cold and hot (featuring q-nonextensive distribution) electrons with stationary ions. It is shown that in such plasma, propagation of EA wave packets is governed by a modified NLSE which accounts for the geometrical effect and the nonextensivity of the hot electron species. It is found that the nature of the modulational instabilities would be significantly modified due to the geometrical effects, density ratio α of the hot-to-cold electrons species as well as their temperature ratio θ. Also, there exists a modulation instability period for the cylindrical and spherical envelope excitations, which does not exist in the one-dimensional case. Furthermore, spherical EA solitary wave packets are more structurally stable to perturbations than the cylindrical ones. The relevance of the current study to EA wave modulation in auroral zone plasma is highlighted.