Stationary rarefaction wave in magnetized Hall plasmas

We demonstrate the existence of a stationary rarefaction wave in a current-carrying plasma. The result unexpectedly mismatches with the commonly accepted viewpoint about the impossibility of rarefaction shocks in gases or plasmas. The discovered wave may appear when the magnetic field has penetrated into the plasma and magnetized the electrons. At this stage, the wave front is formed at the cathode and propagates towards the anode through the magnetized quasineutral plasma. The case of low collisionality is investigated analytically. This phenomenon could explain the recent surprising experimental observations of a local plasma density drop in several laboratory plasmas.