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We show that a purely kinetic approach to the excitation of waves by cosmic rays in the vicinity of a shock front leads to predict the appearance of a non-alfv\'enic fastly growing mode which has the same dispersion relation as that…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-13 Elena Amato , Pasquale Blasi

Perpendicular collisionless shocks propagating into partially ionized plasmas are investigated by two-dimensional hybrid particle simulations. It is shown that some neutral particles leak into the upstream region from the downstream region,…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2015-06-16 Yutaka Ohira

A critical component of particle acceleration in astrophysical shocks is the non-resonant (Bell) instability, where the streaming of cosmic rays (CRs) leads to the amplification of magnetic fields necessary to scatter particles. In this…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-02-11 Emily Lichko , Damiano Caprioli , Benedikt Schroer , Siddhartha Gupta

Collisionless fast-magnetosonic shocks are often treated as smooth, planar boundaries, yet observations point to organized corrugation of the shock surface. A plausible driver is upstream turbulence. Broadband fluctuations arriving at the…

Astrophysical and high-energy-density laboratory plasmas often have large-amplitude, sub-Larmor-scale electromagnetic fluctuations excited by various kinetic-streaming or anisotropy-driven instabilities. The Weibel (or the filamentation)…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2017-05-10 Mikhail V. Medvedev

(Abridged) This paper addresses the issue of magnetic field generation in a relativistic shock precursor through micro-instabilities. The level of magnetization of the upstream plasma turns out to be a crucial parameter, notably because the…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2015-05-13 Martin Lemoine , Guy Pelletier

The growth rate of long wavelength kinetic instabilities arising due to the interaction of a collimated beam of relativistic particles and a cold unmagnetized plasma are calculated in the ultra relativistic limit. For sufficiently…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2015-05-19 Itay Rabinak , Boaz Katz , Eli Waxman

Plasma instabilities (e.g., Buneman, Weibel and other two-stream instabilities) excited in collisionless shocks are responsible for particle (electron, positron, and ion) acceleration. Using a new 3-D relativistic particle-in-cell code, we…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2011-02-11 K. -I. Nishikawa , J. Niemiec , P. E. Hardee , M. Medvedev , H. Sol , Y. Mizuno , B. Zhang , M. Pohl , M. Oka , D. H. Hartmann

A collisionless shock may be strongly modified by the presence of neutral atoms through the processes of charge exchange between ions and neutrals and ionization of the latter. These two processes lead to exchange of energy and momentum…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2015-06-04 P. Blasi , G. Morlino , R. Bandiera , E. Amato , D. Caprioli

A leading explanation for the origin of Galactic cosmic rays is acceleration at high-Mach number shock waves in the collisionless plasma surrounding young supernova remnants. Evidence for this is provided by multi-wavelength non-thermal…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2017-08-02 A. Masters , A. H. Sulaiman , Ł. Stawarz , B. Reville , N. Sergis , M. Fujimoto , D. Burgess , A. J. Coates , M. K. Dougherty

We show that an unpolarized electric current incident perpendicular to the plane of a thin ferromagnet can excite a spin-wave instability transverse to the current direction if source and drain contacts are not symmetric. The instability,…

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics · Physics 2009-11-10 M. L. Polianski , P. W. Brouwer

Charged plasma particles form an anisotropic counter-streaming distribution at the front of a shock. In the near- and ultra-relativistic regimes, Weibel (or two-stream) instability produces near-equipartition, chaotic, small-scale magnetic…

Diffusive shock acceleration at collisionless shocks remains the most likely process for accelerating particles in a variety of astrophysical sources. While the standard prediction for strong shocks is that the spectrum of accelerated…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-12-15 Pierre Cristofari , Pasquale Blasi , Damiano Caprioli

We investigate the acceleration of light particles in perpendicular shocks for plasmas consisting of a mixture of leptonic and hadronic particles. Starting from the full set of conservation equations for the mixed plasma constituents, we…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2015-06-05 A. Stockem , F. Fiuza , R. A. Fonseca , L. O. Silva

A full particle simulation study is carried out on the electron acceleration at a collisionless, relatively low Alfven Mach number (M_A=5), perpendicular shock. Recent self-consistent hybrid shock simulations have demonstrated that the…

Astrophysics · Physics 2011-02-11 Takayuki Umeda , Masahiro Yamao , Ryo Yamazaki

A non-resonant instability for the amplification of the interstellar magnetic field in young Supernova Remnant (SNR) shocks was predicted by Bell (2004), and is thought to be relevant for the acceleration of cosmic ray (CR) particles. For…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2015-05-18 L. Gargate , R. A. Fonseca , J. Niemiec , M. Pohl , R. Bingham , L. O. Silva

Energetic astrophysical phenomena, such as $\gamma$-ray bursts and supernova explosion-driven shocks in collisionless plasmas, involve various plasma kinetic instabilities, such as the Weibel instability. These systems support various types…

Plasma Physics · Physics 2025-10-27 Michael C. Sitarz

Charged particles can be accelerated to high energies by collisionless shock waves in astrophysical environments, such as supernova remnants. By interacting with the magnetized ambient medium, these shocks can transfer energy to particles.…

We consider a recently discovered class of instabilities, driven by cosmic ray streaming, in a variety of environments. We show that although these instabilities have been discussed primarily in the context of supernova driven interstellar…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2014-11-20 Ellen G. Zweibel , John E. Everett

Particle currents flowing against an external driving are a fascinating phenomenon in both single-particle and interacting many-particle systems. Underlying physical mechanisms of such current reversals are not fully understood yet.…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2026-03-10 Moritz Wolf , Sören Schweers , Philipp Maass