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Shimada & Hoshino 2005
Shimada, N. and Hoshino, M. (2005). Effect of strong thermalization on shock dynamical behavior. Journal of Geophysical Research 110. doi: 10.1029/2004JA010596. issn: 0148-0227.

The dynamics of the perpendicular shock front is examined under various plasma parameters by using particle-in-cell numerical simulation. As widely accepted, above the critical Mach number (~3) the front of (quasi-)perpendicular shocks show nonstationary behavior due to the shock self-reformation. In much higher Mach number regime (MA > 20), we find that dynamics of the shock front self-reformation can be modified. Nonlinear evolution of microinstabilities in the shock transition region results turbulent profiles in a microscopic view (≤cpe), while, from a macroscopic view (>several cpe) because of rapid, strong thermalization in the shock transition region, the localized accumulation of the plasma due to ion dynamics is smeared out in both of the velocity phase space and real space. As a result, the shock self-reformation is realized within a reduced time and space. We can say there is a possibility that rapid, strong dissipation helps to stabilize the macroscopic shock front dynamics; the shock self-reformation still persists, though. The strong thermalization is caused by the nonlinear evolution of two-stream instability between the electron and the reflected/incident ion components and following ion-acoustic instability. We think that the modification of the shock self-reformation process observed in high Mach number regime indicates an important role of electron kinetics and heating in the macroscopic shock front behavior.

BACKGROUND DATA FILES

Abstract

Keywords
Space Plasma Physics, Shock waves, Nonlinear Geophysics, Nonlinear waves, shock waves, solitons (0689, 2487, 3280, 3285, 4275, 6934, 7851, 7852), Space Plasma Physics, Mathematical and numerical techniques (0500, 3200), Space Plasma Physics, Kinetic waves and instabilities, Space Plasma Physics, Wave/particle interactions (2483, 6984), electron kinetics, plasma instabilities, shock waves
Journal
Journal of Geophysical Research
http://www.agu.org/journals/jb/
Publisher
American Geophysical Union
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