Shock formation in electron-ion plasmas: mechanism and timing
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
2015-06-24 v1 Plasma Physics
Abstract
We analyse the full shock formation process in electron-ion plasmas in theory and simulations. It is accepted that electromagnetic shocks in initially unmagnetised relativistic plasmas are triggered by the filamentation instability. However, the transition from the first unstable phase to the quasi-steady shock is still missing. We derive a theoretical model for the shock formation time, taking into account the filament merging in the non-linear phase of the filamentation instability. This process is much slower than in electron-positron pair shocks, so that the shock formation is longer by a factor proportional to sqrt(m_i/m_e) ln(m_i/m_e).
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1504.00468,
title = {Shock formation in electron-ion plasmas: mechanism and timing},
author = {Anne Stockem Novo and Antoine Bret and Ricardo A. Fonseca and Luis O. Silva},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1504.00468},
year = {2015}
}