Electrostatic soliton and double layer structures in unmagnetized degenerate pair plasmas

The acoustic solitons and double layers are studied in unmagnetized quantum electron-positron plasmas in the presence of stationary ions The quantum hydrodynamic model is employed and reductive perturbation method is used to derive the Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) and extended KdV equations for solitons and double layers, respectively It is found that in the linear limit both slow acoustic and fast Langmuir waves can propagate in such type of quantum plasmas like in classical pair-ion or pair plasmas The amplitude and width of the electrostatic solitons are found to be decreasing with the increase in concentration of positrons (or decrease in the concentration of ions) in degenerate electron-positron-ion plasmas It is found that only rarefactive double layer can exist in such plasmas which depend on various parameters The dependence of double layer structure on ion concentration and quantum diffraction effects of electrons and positrons are also discussed The results are also elaborated graphically by considering dense plasma parameters in the outer layers of astrophysical objects such as white dwarfs and neutron stars (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics [doi 10 1063/1 3515074]