Related papers: Nonthermal Electron Acceleration at Collisionless …
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…
Thermal electrons cannot directly participate in the process of diffusive acceleration at electron-ion shocks because their Larmor radii are smaller than the shock transition width: this is the well-known electron injection problem of…
Non-relativistic collisionless shock waves are widespread in space and astrophysical plasmas and are known as efficient particle accelerators. However, our understanding of collisionless shocks, including their structure and the mechanisms…
Context. The diffusive shock acceleration mechanism has been widely accepted as the acceleration mechanism for galactic cosmic rays. While self-consistent hybrid simulations have shown how power-law spectra are produced, detailed…
What are the mechanisms of particle acceleration and radiation, as well as magnetic field build up and decay in relativistic shocks are open questions with important implications to various phenomena in high energy astrophysics. While the…
Several colliding-wind massive binaries are known to be non-thermal emitters in the radio domain. This constitutes strong evidence for the fact that an efficient particle acceleration process is at work in these objects. The acceleration…
We use 2D particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations to study the effect of the saturated whistler instability on the viscous heating and nonthermal acceleration of electrons in a shearing, collisionless plasma with a growing magnetic field,…
We use large hybrid (kinetic protons-fluid electrons) simulations to investigate the transport of energetic particles in self-consistent electromagnetic configurations of collisionless shocks. In previous papers of this series, we showed…
Shocks waves are a ubiquitous feature of many astrophysical plasma systems, and an important process for energy dissipation and transfer. The physics of these shock waves are frequently treated/modeled as a collisional, fluid MHD…
We present a three-dimensional hybrid simulation of a collisionless perpendicular shock in a partially ionized plasma for the first time. In this simulation, the shock velocity and the upstream ionization fraction are Vsh ~ 1333 km/s and fi…
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…
Collisionless, turbulent plasmas surround the Earth, from the magnetosphere to the intergalactic medium, and the fluctuations within them affect nearly every field in the space sciences, from space weather forecasts to theories of galaxy…
The past decade has seen an outstanding development of nonthermal particle acceleration in magnetic reconnection in magnetically-dominated systems, with clear signatures of power-law energy distributions as a common outcome of…
We investigate the possibility of stochastic acceleration of background low-energy electrons by turbulent plasma waves. We consider the resonant interaction of the charged particles with all branches of the transverse plasma waves…
Stochastic acceleration of electrons and protons by waves propagating parallel to the large scale magnetic fields of magnetized plasmas is studied with emphasis on the feasibility of accelerating particles from a thermal background to…
High Mach number collisionless shocks are found in planetary systems and supernova remnants (SNRs). Electrons are heated at these shocks to the temperature well above the Rankine-Hugoniot prediction. However processes responsible for…
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…
We investigate shock structure and particle acceleration in relativistic magnetized collisionless pair shocks by means of 2.5D and 3D particle-in-cell simulations. We explore a range of inclination angles between the pre-shock magnetic…
Particle acceleration at plasma shocks appears to be ubiquitous in the universe, spanning systems in the heliosphere, supernova remnants, and relativistic jets in distant active galaxies and gamma-ray bursts. This review addresses some of…
The propagation of ion acoustic shocks in nonthermal plasmas is investigated, both analytically and numerically. An unmagnetized collisionless electron-ion plasma is considered, featuring a superthermal (non-Maxwellian) electron…