Abstract
In this paper, a homogeneous system of unmagnetized collisionless plasma consisting of a cold electron fluid, low-temperature ion obeying Boltzmann-type distribution and high-temperature ion obeying non-thermal distribution is considered. The perturbation method with two different forms of stretching will be considered to drive the KdV and modified KdV (mKdV) equations. The Agrawal's method is applied to formulate the time-fractional KdV and mKdV equations. A variational iteration method is used to solve these equations. The results show that the fractional order of the differential equations can be used to modify the shape of the solitary pulse instead of adding higher order dissipation terms to the equations. This study may be useful to construct the compressive and rarefactive electrostatic potential pulses associated with the broadband electrostatic noise type emissions.