Head-on collision between two-counter-propagating electron acoustic soliton and double layer in an unmagnetized plasma

The head-on collision between two-counter-propagating electron acoustic solitons and double layers (DLs) in an unmagnetized collisionless multi-species plasma consisting of inertial cold electron fluid and (α, q)-distributed hot electrons and positrons has been analyzed with the stationary background of massive positive ions. For nonlinear analysis of colliding wave phenomena, the coupled Korteweg–de Vries equation (KdVE), modified KdVE (mKdVE), and standard Gardner equation have been derived by adopting the extended Poincaré–Lighthill–Kuo technique. The effect of non-dimensional parameters on the collisional KdV, mKdV, and Gardner solitons (GSs) and DLs has been examined in detail by considering the limiting cases of (α, q)-distributions. It is found that the plasma model supports (i) the compressive and rarefactive collisional KdV solitons and GSs, (ii) only compressive mKdV solitons, and (iii) only rarefactive collisional DLs. The rarefactive collisional solitons are more affected by nonextensivity and the increase of the temperature of electrons than their compressive counterpart, whereas the rarefactive collisional DLs only existed in the presence of nonthermality.