Related papers: The Persistent Mystery of Collisionless Shocks
Collisionless shocks are ubiquitous in the Universe and are held responsible for the production of non-thermal particles and high-energy radiation. In the absence of particle collisions in the system, theoretical works show that the…
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.…
Dynamics of the magnetospheric plasma configuration intrinsically features intermittent slow and fast phases. The fast transition is a nonlinear process, loss of equilibrium which ends up the slow quasi-static evolution. The process is…
One of the main features of astrophysical shocks is their ability to accelerate particles to extremely high energies. The leading acceleration mechanism, the diffusive shock acceleration is reviewed. It is demonstrated that its efficiency…
Shocks in relativistically hot plasmas are thought to exist in various high-energy astrophysical phenomena, but it is not clear how relativistic collisionless shocks are formed, whether particles are accelerated by the shock as in the case…
Collisionless shock acceleration, which transfers localized particle energies to non-thermal energetic particles via electromagnetic potential, is ubiquitous in space plasma. We investigate dynamics of collisionless electrostatic shocks…
Collisionless shocks are ubiquitous in astrophysics and in the lab. Recent numerical simulations and experiments have shown how they can arise from the encounter of two collisionless plasma shells. When the shells interpenetrate, the…
Magnetic reconnection is a ubiquitous plasma process that transforms magnetic energy into particle energy during eruptive events throughout the universe. Reconnection not only converts energy during solar flares and geomagnetic substorms…
The physics of collisionless shocks is a very broad topic which has been studied for more than five decades. However, there are a number of important issues which remain unresolved. The energy repartition amongst particle populations in…
Determining the physical mechanisms that extract energy from turbulent fluctuations in weakly collisional magnetized plasmas is necessary for a more complete characterization of the behavior of a variety of space and astrophysical plasmas.…
Collisionless plasma shocks are a common feature of many space and astrophysical systems and are sources of high-energy particles and non-thermal emission, channeling as much as 20\% of the shock's energy into non-thermal particles. The…
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…
Collisionless dissipation of macroscopic energy into heat is an unsolved problem of space and astrophysical plasmas, e.g., solar wind and Earth's magnetosheath. The most viable process under consideration is the turbulent-cascade of…
In collisional fluids, a number of key processes rely on the frequency of binary collisions. Collisions seem necessary to generate a shock wave when two fluids collide fast enough, to fulfill the Rankine-Hugoniot relations, to establish an…
Diffusive shock acceleration at collisionless shocks is thought to be the source of many of the energetic particles observed in space. Large-scale spatial variations of the magnetic field has been shown to be important in understanding…
The formation of collisionless shock fronts is an ubiquitous phenomenon in space plasma environments. In the solar wind shocks might accompany coronal mass ejections, while even more violent events, such as supernovae, produce shock fronts…
The mechanism of diffusive Fermi acceleration at collisionless plasma shock waves is widely invoked in astrophysics to explain the appearance of non-thermal particle populations in a variety of environments, including sites of cosmic ray…
Cosmological shock waves are induced during hierarchical formation of large-scale structure in the universe. Like most astrophysical shocks, they are collisionless, since they form in the tenuous intergalactic medium through electromagnetic…
A pair of curved shocks in a collisionless plasma is examined with a two-dimensional particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation. The shocks are created by the collision of two electron-ion clouds at a speed that exceeds everywhere the threshold…
Although the origin of cosmic rays (CRs) remains an open question, collisionless magnetized shock waves are widely regarded as key sites for particle acceleration. Recent theories further suggest that shock-shock collisions in stellar…