The Vlasov–Poisson–Boltzmann System for a Disparate Mass Binary Mixture

The Vlasov–Poisson–Boltzmann system is often used to govern the motion of plasmas consisting of electrons and ions with disparate masses when collisions of charged particles are described by the two-component Boltzmann collision operator. The perturbation theory of the system around global Maxwellians recently has been well established in Guo (Commun Pure Appl Math 55:1104–1135, 2002). It should be more interesting to further study the existence and stability of nontrivial large time asymptotic profiles for the system even with slab symmetry in space, particularly understanding the effect of the self-consistent potential on the non-trivial long-term dynamics of the binary system. In this paper, we consider the problem in the setting of rarefaction waves. The analytical tool is based on the macro–micro decomposition introduced in Liu et al. (Physica D 188(3–4):178–192, 2004) that we have been able to develop for the case of the two-component Boltzmann equations around local bi-Maxwellians. Our focus is to explore how the disparate masses and charges of particles play a role in the analysis of the approach of the complex coupling system time-asymptotically toward a non-constant equilibrium state whose macroscopic quantities satisfy the quasineutral nonisentropic Euler system.