Traveling ionization front in a non-self-maintained high-pressure volume microwave discharge

A model of quasistationary spatially nonuniform structures is proposed on the basis of the nonlinear system of equations of hydrodynamics, describing a vibrationally and translationally nonequilibrium plasma in a microwave field. Qualitative investigation of the system showed that the following autowave solutions exist: stable solutions of the type “traveling front” and unstable autosoliton solutions. The proposed method for calculating the eigenvalue in the problem of a traveling front made it possible to obtain a simple analytical expression for the propagating velocity of the ionization front as a function of the parameters of the field and the medium. The obtained dependence is compared with the experimental data.