English

Electron Surfing and Drift Accelerations in a Weibel-dominated High-Mach-number Shock

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2017-09-13 v1 Computational Physics Plasma Physics Space Physics

Abstract

How electrons get accelerated to relativistic energies in a high-Mach-number quasi-perpendicular shock is presented by means of ab initio particle-in-cell simulations in three dimensions. We found that coherent electrostatic Buneman waves and ion-Weibel magnetic turbulence coexist in a strong-shock structure whereby particles gain energy during shock-surfing and subsequent stochastic drift accelerations. Energetic electrons that initially experienced the surfing acceleration undergo pitch-angle diffusion by interacting with magnetic turbulence and continuous acceleration during confinement in the shock transition region. The ion-Weibel turbulence is the key to the efficient nonthermal electron acceleration.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1709.03673,
  title  = {Electron Surfing and Drift Accelerations in a Weibel-dominated High-Mach-number Shock},
  author = {Yosuke Matsumoto and Takanobu Amano and Tsunehiko N. Kato and Masahiro Hoshino},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1709.03673},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

5 pages, 4 figures