Self-organization of collisionless shocks: from a laminar profile to a rippled time-dependent structure

Michael Gedalin, Vadim Roytershteyn

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

2 Scopus citations

Abstract

A collisionless shock structure results from the nonlinear interaction between charged particles and electromagnetic fields. Yet, a collisionless shock is globally governed by the mass, momentum and energy conservation requirements. A stable shock structure must ensure that the fluxes of the conserved quantities are constant on average, and, therefore, is determined by this necessity. Here, we study an observed high upstream temperature high Mach number shock and show that the conservation laws cannot be fulfilled unless the shock is spatially inhomogeneous along the shock front and time-dependent.

Original languageEnglish
Article number905900606
JournalJournal of Plasma Physics
Volume90
Issue number6
DOIs
StatePublished - 15 Nov 2024

Keywords

  • astrophysical plasmas
  • plasma nonlinear phenomena
  • space plasma physics

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Condensed Matter Physics

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