The properties of solitary and shock structures associated with nonlinear ion modes in a dense plasma with strongly coupled nondegenerate ions and degenerate electron fluids are presented. For this purpose, we have used the viscoelastic fluid model for the ions, the inertialess electron momentum equation with weakly and ultrarelativistic pressure laws for the degenerate electron fluids, and Poisson's equation to derive the Burgers and Kortweg–de Vries equations. Possible stationary solutions of the latter are the shock and solitary structures, respectively. It is found that the speed, amplitude, and width of the shock and solitary waves critically depend on the strong coupling between ions and electron degeneracy effects. The relevance of our investigation to the role of localized excitations in dense astrophysical objects is briefly discussed.

• Received 2 April 2011

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.84.026405