Related papers: Electron-Ion Temperature Ratio in Astrophysical Sh…
Collisionless shocks are loosely defined as shocks where the transition between pre-and post-shock states happens on a length scale much shorter than the collisional mean free path. In the absence of collision to enforce thermal equilibrium…
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…
Astrophysical shocks are often collisionless shocks. An open question about collisionless shocks is whether electrons and ions each establish their own post-shock temperature, or whether they quickly equilibrate in the shock region. Here we…
The topic of this review is the current state of our knowledge about the degree of initial equilibration between electrons, protons and ions at supernova remnant (SNR) shocks. Specifically, the question has been raised as to whether there…
The analysis of Balmer-dominated optical spectra from non-radiative (adiabatic) SNRs has shown that the ratio of the electron to proton temperature temperature at the blast wave is close to unity at v_s <= 400 km/s, but declines sharply…
Weakly magnetized shock waves are paramount to a large diversity of environments, including supernova remnants, blazars, and binary-neutron-star mergers. Understanding the distribution of energy between electrons and ions within these…
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…
The heating and acceleration of the solar wind remains one of the fundamental unsolved problems in heliophysics. It is usually observed that the proton temperature $T_i$ is highly correlated with the solar wind speed $V_{SW}$, while the…
Understanding the heating of electrons to quasi-thermal energies at collisionless shocks has broad implications for plasma astrophysics. It directly impacts the interpretation of X-ray spectra from shocks, is important for understanding how…
Our statistics on Galactic supernova remnants (SNRs) shows that the electrons temperature ($T$) of hard X-ray and the shock waves traveling velocity ($\upsilon$) decreases with ages ($t$) for all-sort remnants. However, the shock waves…
The last ten years a number of observational advances have substantially increased our knowledge of shock phenomena in supernova remnants. This progress has mainly been made possible by the recent improvements in X-ray and Gamma-ray…
Recent advances in the understanding of the properties of supernova remnant shocks have been precipitated by the Chandra and XMM X-ray Observatories, and the HESS Atmospheric Cerenkov Telescope in the TeV band. A critical problem for this…
Although collisionless shocks are ubiquitous in astrophysics, certain key aspects of them are not well understood. In particular, the process known as collisionless electron heating, whereby electrons are rapidly energized at the shock…
Supernova remnants (SNRs), the products of stellar explosions, are powerful astrophysical laboratories, which allow us to study the physics of collisionless shocks, thanks to their bright electromagnetic emission. Blast wave shocks…
In situ observations of the solar wind frequently show the temperature of $\alpha$-particles (fully ionized helium), $T_\alpha$, to significantly differ from that of protons (ionized hydrogen), $T_p$. Many heating processes in the plasma…
We present analysis and modeling of X-ray spectra from the blast wave shock of DEM L71. We have used both Chandra ACIS-S data and optical Fabry-Perot spectra of the blast wave to measure the electron and proton temperatures, respectively.…
We study the electron-proton temperature equilibration behind several shocks of the RCW 86 supernova remnant. To measure the proton temperature, we use published and new optical spectra, all from different locations on the remnant. For each…
Recent X-ray observations of merger shocks in galaxy clusters have shown that the post-shock plasma is two-temperature, with the protons being hotter than the electrons. In this work, the second of a series, we investigate by means of…
Collisionless shocks heat electrons in the solar wind, interstellar blast waves, and hot gas permeating galaxy clusters. How much shock heating goes to electrons instead of ions, and what plasma physics controls electron heating? We…
Shock waves associated with shell type supernova remnants are considered to be possible sites of cosmic ray acceleration. Since shocks are capable of accelerating electrons in addition to protons one anticipates both species to contribute…