Related papers: Shock acceleration in partially neutral plasmas
The early acceleration of protons and electrons in the nonrelativistic collisionless shocks with three obliquities are investigated through 1D particle-in-cell simulations. In the simulations, the charged particles possessing a velocity of…
Shock waves propagating in collisionless heliospheric and astrophysical plasmas have been studied extensively over the decades. One prime motivation is to understand the nonthermal particle acceleration at shocks. Although the theory of…
We investigate heating and acceleration of protons from a thermal gas with a generic diffusion and acceleration model, and subject to Coulomb scattering and energy loss, as was carried out in Petrosian & East (2008) for electrons. As…
Nonrelativistic electrostatic unmagnetized shocks are frequently observed in laboratory plasmas and they are likely to exist in astrophysical plasmas. Their maximum speed, expressed in units of the ion acoustic speed far upstream of the…
We present results from a Monte Carlo simulation of a parallel collisionless shock undergoing particle acceleration. Our simulation, which contains parameterized scattering and a particular thermal leakage injection model, calculates the…
Electron acceleration to non-thermal energies in low Mach number (M<5) shocks is revealed by radio and X-ray observations of galaxy clusters and solar flares, but the electron acceleration mechanism remains poorly understood. Diffusive…
Cosmological hydrodynamic simulations have demonstrated that shock waves could be produced in the intergalactic medium by supersonic flow motions during the course of hierarchical clustering of the large-scale-structure in the Universe.…
Reconnection shocks in a magnetically dominated plasma must be compressive. Non-thermal ion acceleration can occur across built-in slow shocks, and across outflow fast shocks when the outflow is supermagnetosonic and the field is line-tied.…
Non-relativistic shocks accelerate ions to highly relativistic energies provided that the orientation of the magnetic field is closely aligned with the shock normal (quasi-parallel shock configuration). In contrast, quasi-perpendicular…
The presence of neutral hydrogen in the shock proximity changes the structure of the shock and affects the spectra of particles accelerated through the first-order Fermi mechanism. This phenomenon has profound implications for the…
Energetic positrons have been observed in the interstellar medium, and high-energy positrons with relativistic energies up to approximately 1 TeV have been detected in Galactic cosmic rays. We conducted a study on the acceleration of…
This paper overviews experimental and numerical results on acceleration of narrow energy spread ion beams by an electrostatic collisionless shockwave driven by 1 um (Omega EP) and 10 um (UCLA Neptune Laboratory) lasers in near critical…
Monte Carlo techniques are used to model nonlinear particle acceleration in parallel collisionless shocks of various speeds, including mildly relativistic ones. When the acceleration is efficient, the backreaction of accelerated particles…
Particle acceleration in relativistic shocks of electron-positron plasmas with proton admixture is investigated through two-dimensional (2D) particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations. The upstream plasma, with a bulk Lorentz factor of $10$ and a…
Non-radiative shocks accelerate particles and heat astrophysical plasmas. While supernova remnants are the most well-studied example, neutron star (NS) bow shocks are also non-radiative and Balmer-dominated. NS bow shocks are likely…
Intense laser-plasma interactions are an essential tool for the laboratory study of ion acceleration at a collisionless shock. With two-dimensional particle-in-cell calculations of a multicomponent plasma we observe two electrostatic…
Magnetized collisionless shocks drive particle acceleration broadly in space and astrophysics. We perform the first large-scale particle-in-cell simulations with realistic laboratory parameters (density, temperature, and velocity) to…
When the pressure of particles accelerated at shock waves is no longer negligible compared to the kinetic pressure of the gas, the linear theory of diffusive shock acceleration breaks down. This is expected in particular when the shock…
The expansion of a dense plasma through a more rarefied ionised medium is a phenomenon of interest in various physics environments ranging from astrophysics to high energy density laser- matter laboratory experiments. Here this situation is…
We use fully kinetic particle-in-cell simulations with unprecedentedly large transverse box sizes to study particle acceleration in weakly-magnetized mildly relativistic shocks traveling at a velocity $\approx 0.75c$ and a Mach number of…