Figure 3

(a) The initial density profile of the plasma cloud in the y direction at x = 0, used in the simulations. (b–f) the electron density distributions in the x-y plane at different times. (g) The distribution of the electrostatic field E _y at \({\rm{t}}=750\frac{2{\boldsymbol{\pi }}}{{{\boldsymbol{\omega }}}_{{\boldsymbol{pe}}}}\). (h) The lineout of E _y along the dashed line in (g). (i) Typical traces of an ion trapped in the tail (blue point) and an ion going through the central region (red star) with time going on.