The Cauchy problem for the Euler-Poisson system and derivation of the Zakharov-Kuznetsov equation

Abstract: We consider in this paper the rigorous justification of the Zakharov-Kuznetsov equation from the Euler-Poisson system for uniformly magnetized plasmas. We first provide a proof of the local well-posedness of the Cauchy problem for the aforementioned system in dimensions two and three. Then we prove that the long-wave small-amplitude limit is described by the Zakharov-Kuznetsov equation. This is done first in the case of cold plasma; we then show how to extend this result in presence of the isothermal pressure term with uniform estimates when this latter goes to zero.