Time evolution of cylindrical and spherical shock waves in an ultracold neutral plasma with non-Maxwellian electrons

Properties of non-planar (cylindrical and spherical) shock waves in an ultracold neutral (UCN) plasma are analyzed by using the generalized hydrodynamic model for ions and non-Maxwellian electron distribution functions. For this purpose, non-planar modified Burgers equations have been derived and their numerical solutions are presented. The ion-acoustic shock waves, as predicted here, may be associated with nonlinear structures in the forthcoming laboratory UCN plasma experiments. Copyright (C) EPLA, 2011