Related papers: A mechanism that could stop the acceleration proce…
A direct numerical simulation of a strong relativistic collisionless shock propagating into an unmagnetized medium has been performed in two spatial dimensions. It is found that: (i) collisionless shock exists, (ii) particle acceleration is…
In strictly collisionless electrostatic shocks, the ion distribution function can develop discontinuities along phase-space separatrices, due to partial reflection of the ion population. In this paper, we depart from the strictly…
Hot-cold ablative mixing plasmas are ubiquitous in astrophysical and laboratory systems, where a cold/dense plasma is roughly in pressure balance with a hot/dilute plasma. Examples include the plasma thermal quench during major disruptions…
We review recent progress on collisionless relativistic shocks. Kinetic instability theory is briefed including its predictions and limitations. The main focus is on numerical experiments in (i) pair and (ii) electron-nucleon plasmas. The…
Collisionless shocks in plasmas play an important role in space physics (Earth's bow shock) and astrophysics (supernova remnants, relativistic jets, gamma-ray bursts, high energy cosmic rays). While the formation of a fluid shock through…
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…
First order Fermi acceleration at astrophysical shocks is often invoked as a mechanism for the generation of non-thermal particles. This mechanism is especially simple in the approximation that the accelerated particles behave like test…
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,…
We show that the Weibel-mediated collisionless shocks are driven at non-relativistic propagation speed (0.1c < V < 0.45c) in unmagnetized electron-ion plasmas by performing two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations. It is shown that the…
Kinetic approaches provide an effective description of the process of particle acceleration at shock fronts and allow to take into account the dynamical reaction of the accelerated particles as well as the amplification of the turbulent…
In this paper we investigate effects of neutral particles on shocks propagating into the partially ionized medium. We find that for 120 km/s < u_{sh} < 3000 km/s (u_{sh} is the shock velocity), about ten percent of upstream neutral…
Large-scale structure formation, accretion and merging processes, AGN activity produce cosmological gas shocks. The shocks convert a fraction of the energy of gravitationally accelerated flows to internal energy of the gas. Being the main…
Non-linear sound is an extreme phenomenon typically observed in solids after violent explosions. But granular media are different. Right when they jam, these fragile and disordered solids exhibit a vanishing rigidity and sound speed, so…
The theory of diffusive acceleration of energetic particles at shock fronts assumes charged particles undergo spatial diffusion in a uniform magnetic field. If, however, the magnetic field is not uniform, but has a stochastic or braided…
We herein investigate shock formation and particle acceleration processes for both protons and electrons in a quasi-parallel high-Mach-number collisionless shock through a long-term, large-scale particle-in-cell simulation. We show that…
We consider stationary axially symmetric black holes with the background scalar field and test particles that can interact with this field directly. Then, particle collision near a black hole can lead to the unbounded energy $% E_{c.m.}$ in…
The condition of linear instability for a converging cylindrical shock wave in an arbitrary inviscid medium is obtained. The shape of resulting shock wave front is not changed significantly, but the restriction of energy cumulation can be…
The selfconsistent steady state solution for a strong shock, significantly modified by accelerated particles is obtained on the level of a kinetic description, assuming Bohm-type diffusion. The original problem that is commonly formulated…
An experimental investigation of collisionless shock ion acceleration is presented using a multicomponent plasma and a high-intensity picosecond duration laser pulse. Protons are the only accelerated ions when a near-critical-density plasma…
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…