Related papers: Steady-state structure of relativistic collisionle…
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…
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…
In this work, we investigate collisionless shocks propagating in a relativistically hot unmagnetized electron-positron plasmas. We estimate the dissipation fraction at shocks in the relativistically hot plasma, showing that it is…
The localized deposition of the energy of a laser pulse, as it ablates a solid target, introduces high thermal pressure gradients in the plasma. The thermal expansion of this laser-heated plasma into the ambient medium (ionized residual…
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…
It is shown that collisionless shock waves can be driven in unmagnetized electron-positron plasmas by performing a two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulation. At the shock transition region, strong magnetic fields are generated by a…
lasma instabilities excited in collisionless shocks are responsible for particle acceleration. We have investigated the particle acceleration and shock structure associated with an unmagnetized relativistic electron-positron jet propagating…
Relativistic radiation mediated shocks (RRMS) likely form in prodigious cosmic explosions. The structure and emission of such shocks is regulated by copious production of electron-positron pairs inside the shock transition layer. It has…
When two plasmas collide, their interaction can be mediated by collisionless plasma instabilities or binary collisions between particles of each shell. By comparing the maximum growth rate of the collisionless instabilities with the…
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…
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…
A case of two interpenetrating, cold and quasi-neutral ion-electron plasmas is investigated with the multi-fluid approach. We consider that one plasma flows quasi-parallel to the lines of a background magnetic field embedded in another…
Relativistic collisionless shocks are associated with efficient particle acceleration when propagating into weakly magnetized homogeneous media; as the magnetization increases, particle acceleration becomes suppressed. We demonstrate that…
Collisionless shocks tend to send charged particles into the upstream, driving electric currents through the plasma. Using kinetic particle-in-cell simulations, we investigate how the background thermal plasma neutralizes such currents in…
It is generally accepted that magnetic fields generated in the nonlinear development of the transverse Weibel instability provide effective collisionality in unmagnetized collisionless shocks. Recently, extensive two and three dimensional…
One-dimensional steady-state plasma-field structures in overdense plasma are studied assuming that the electron temperature is uniform over plasma bulk and the ions are stationary. It is shown that there may exist solutions for electron…
Energetic electromagnetic emissions by astrophysical jets like those that are launched during the collapse of a massive star and trigger gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are partially attributed to relativistic internal shocks. The shocks are…
In this paper, the first in a series, we present a new theoretical model for the global structure and dissipation of relativistically magnetized collisionless shock waves. Quite remarkably, we find that in contrast to unmagnetized shocks,…
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…
Relativistic collisionless shocks in electron-ion plasma are thought to occur in the afterglow phase of Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs), and in other environments where relativistic flows interact with the interstellar medium. A particular regime…