Related papers: Very High Mach Number Electrostatic Shocks in Coll…
A new magnetic field generation mechanism in electrostatic shocks is found, which can produce fields with magnetic energy density as high as 0.01 of the kinetic energy density of the flows on time scales $ \tilde \, 10^4 \,…
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…
An ablative plasma shock can emanate from the interface between a cold/dense plasma and a hot/dilute ambient plasma, where the plasma mean-free-path is much longer than the temperature gradient length. The shock is driven by thermal flux…
How thermal equilibrium is determined in a weakly collisional plasma is a fundamental question in plasma physics. This letter shows that the turbulence driven by the magnetic curvature and density gradient tends to equilibrate the…
A theory for presheath-like structures near probes biased at and above the plasma potential is developed for collisionless plasmas with an electron-neutral mean free path on the order of the chamber scale. The theory predicts presheath-like…
Electrodynamics becomes nonlinear and permits the self-interaction of fields when the quantised nature of vacuum states is taken into account. The effect on a plane probe pulse propagating through a stronger constant crossed background is…
We discuss 3D simulations of relativistic collisionless shocks in electron-positron pair plasmas using the particle-in-cell (PIC) method. The shock structure is mainly controlled by the shock's magnetization ("sigma" parameter). We…
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…
Collisionless shocks can be produced as a result of strong magnetic fields in a plasma flow, and therefore are common in many astrophysical systems. The Weibel instability is one candidate mechanism for the generation of sufficiently strong…
Relativistic particle acceleration in collisionless shocks of supernova remnants is accompanied by magnetic field amplification from cosmic ray (CR) driven plasma instabilities. Bell's fast CR-current instability is predicted to produce…
Energetic astrophysical phenomena, such as $\gamma$-ray bursts and supernova explosion-driven shocks in collisionless plasmas, involve various plasma kinetic instabilities, such as the Weibel instability. These systems support various types…
We present a particle-in-cell simulation of the generation of a collisionless turbulent shock in a dense plasma driven by an ultra-high-intensity laser pulse. From the linear analysis, we highlight the crucial role of the laser-heated and…
It is shown that, under some generic assumptions, shocks cannot accelerate particles unless the overall shock Mach number exceeds a critical value M > sqrt(5). The reason is that for M <= sqrt(5) the work done to compress the flow in a…
We study relativistic unmagnetized collisionless shocks using unprecedentedly large particle-in-cell simulations of two-dimensional pair plasma. High energy particles accelerated by the shock are found to drive magnetic field evolution on a…
In this study, the physics of sheath formation in a collisional two-electron temperature plasma in the presence of an oblique external magnetic field has been investigated. At first, a comparative study among the fluid electron model,…
Context: Cosmic ray acceleration in galaxy clusters is still an ongoing puzzle, with relativistic electrons forming radio relics at merger shocks and emitting synchrotron radiation. In the present work we perform hybrid-kinetic simulations…
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…
We numerically investigate the process of generating magnetic fields from temperature anisotropy of electrons in collisionless initially uniform plasmas. We use a fully kinetic modeling and compare it against a hybrid modeling which treats…
Using a three dimensional relativistic particle-in-cell code we have performed numerical experiments of plasma shells colliding at relativistic velocities. Such scenarios are found in many astrophysical objects e.g. the relativistic outflow…
A collisional magnetized plasma consisting of two temperature electrons has been investigated numerically to study the sheath structure and the ion energy flux to the wall. The low-temperature electrons are described by Maxwellian…