Effect of relativistic ponderomotive force on shock waves in a relativistic degenerate plasma

Abstract We investigate the effect of relativistic ponderomotive force on the propagation of shock waves in relativistic degenerate plasma, which is relevant to high-intensity laser-plasma experiments aimed at replicating extreme conditions on white dwarfs. We derive the KdV-Burger’s equation by incorporating the density modification induced by the ponderomotive force and hence demonstrate that this equation is a suitable model for shock waves affected by ponderomotive force. Unlike previous studies that use ponderomotive force as a source of nonlinearity to derive the nonlinear Schrödinger equation for envelope solitons, our study focuses on the effect of ponderomotive force on shocks produced by the intense laser. We show that the ponderomotive force can significantly modify the strength and shape of shock waves, providing insight into the underlying physics of shock waves in relativistic degenerate plasmas which may help to better understand experimental observations in this regime.