Effects of trapping and finite temperature in a relativistic degenerate plasma

In the present work, we have undertaken, for the first time, investigation on the effect of trapping on the formation of solitary structures in relativistic degenerate plasmas. Such plasmas have been observed in dense astrophysical objects, and in laboratory these may result due to the interaction of intense lasers with matter. We have used the relativistic Fermi-Dirac distribution to describe the dynamics of the degenerate trapped electrons by solving the kinetic equation. The Sagdeev potential approach has been employed to obtain the arbitrary amplitude solitary structures both when the plasma has been considered cold and when small temperature effects have been taken into account. The theoretical results obtained have been analyzed numerically for different parameter values, and the results have been presented graphically. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3646403]