Theory of ion holes in plasmas with flat-topped electron distributions

Coherent bipolar electric field structures with negative unipolar potentials are widely observed in space plasmas. These bipolar structures are often found to be ion Bernstein Greene Kruskal (BGK) modes or ion holes. Most theoretical models of ion holes assume them to be stationary with respect to the background plasma that follows either Maxwellian or kappa-type distribution. In this paper, we present a new theoretical model of ion holes where the structures are non-stationary, and electrons follow flat-topped distribution. We use the classical BGK approach to derive the inequality separating allowed and forbidden simultaneous values of amplitude and spatial width of ion holes. The model reveals that the parametric space for the existence of ion holes decreases with their speed. We applied the developed model to the largest available dataset of ion holes obtained from the magnetospheric multiscale spacecraft observations in the Earth's bow shock region. Published under an exclusive license by AIP Publishing.