Intense interests on electrostatic solitary waves (ESWs) have been triggered by the discoveries of ESWs as the main constituents of the broadband electrostatic noise observed in virtually every plasma boundaries in space. I will discuss our theoretical and experimental breakthroughs on the research of electrostatic solitary waves (ESWs) in recent years. These include analytical investigations on electron and ion phase-space holes (1) and 1D double layers as exact solutions to the nonlinear Vlasov-Poisson equations; the first experimental evidence for loosely constrained electron phase-space holes (2); laboratory measurements of Debye-scale electron solitary waves (3); space observations of electrostatic solitary waves during magnetic reconnection; analysis of solitary waves at shocks and its downstream turbulence (4,5). Our studies as well as numerous other observation and experiment work indicate ubiquitous presence of ESWs in non- equilibrium collisionless plasma systems, and the results of our analytical investigations provide a basis to understand this ubiquity. A few key open questions in current ESW research will be discussed, and collaborations solicited.
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2. Chen et al., J. Geophys. Res., 110, A09211, 2005; Franz et al., J. Geophys. Res., 110, A09212, 2005.
3. Lefebvre et al., Phys. Rev. Lett., 105, 115001, 2010; Lefebvre et al., Nonlinear Processes Geophys., 18, 41-47, 2011. Pickett et al., Nonlinear Processes Geophys., 16, 1-12, 2009.
4. Williams et al., Geophys. Res. Lett., 32, L17103, 2005; Williams et al., Geophys. Res. Lett., 33, L06103, 2006.
5. Pickett et al., Ann. Geophysicae, 22, 2515, 2004; Pickett et al., Nonlinear Processes in Geophys., 12, 181-193, 2005.