On the thickness of a mildly relativistic collisional shock wave
Abstract
We consider an imperfect relativistic fluid which develops a shock wave and discuss its structure and thickness, taking into account the effects of viscosity and heat conduction in the form of sound absorption. The junction conditions and the non linear equations describing the evolution of the shock are derived with the corresponding Newtonian limit discussed in detail. As happens in the non relativistic regime, the thickness is inversely proportional to the discontinuity in the pressure, but new terms of purely relativistic origin are present. Particularizing for a polytropic gas, it is found that the pure viscous relativistic shock is thicker than its nonrelativistic counterpart, while the opposite holds for pure heat conduction.
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0207617,
title = {On the thickness of a mildly relativistic collisional shock wave},
author = {Jose A. S. Lima and Alejandra Kandus and Reuven Opher},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0207617},
year = {2008}
}
Comments
11 pages, no figures, title changed, improved introduction and discussion. New author added