Formation of singularities in plasma ion dynamics

Abstract

We study the formation of singularity for the Euler-Poisson system equipped with the Boltzmann relation, which describes the dynamics of ions in an electrostatic plasma. In general, it is known that smooth solutions to nonlinear hyperbolic equations fail to exist globally in time. We establish criteria for C 1 blow-up of the Euler-Poisson system, both for the isothermal and pressureless cases. In particular, our blow-up condition for the pressureless model does not require that the gradient of velocity is negatively large. In fact, our result particularly implies that the smooth solutions can break down even if the gradient of initial velocity is trivial. For the isothermal case, we prove that smooth solutions leave C 1 class in a finite time when the gradients of the Riemann functions are initially large.