Electron acceleration at a low-Mach-number perpendicular collisionless shock

Abstract

A full particle simulation study is carried out on the electron acceleration at a collisionless, relatively low Alfven Mach number (M_A=5), perpendicular shock. Recent self-consistent hybrid shock simulations have demonstrated that the shock front of perpendicular shocks has a dynamic rippled character along the shock surface of low-Mach-number perpendicular shocks. In this paper, the effect of the rippling of perpendicular shocks on the electron acceleration is examined by means of large-scale (ion-scale) two-dimensional full particle simulations. It has been shown that a large-amplitude electric field is excited at the shock front in association with the ion-scale rippling, and that reflected ions are accelerated upstream at a localized region where the shock-normal electric field of the rippled structure is polarized upstream. The current-driven instability caused by the highly-accelerated reflected ions has a high growth rate to large-amplitude electrostatic waves. Energetic electrons are then generated by the large-amplitude electrostatic waves via electron surfing acceleration at the leading edge of the shock transition region. The present result suggests that the electron surfing acceleration is also a common feature at low-Mach-number perpendicular collisionless shocks.

7 pages, 4 figures, ApJ in press. The paper with full resolution images is http://theo.phys.sci.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/~ryo/papers/shock_lowM.pdf

References in corpus (10)

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• Nonthermal Emission Associated with Strong AGN Outbursts at the Centers of Galaxy Clusters
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• Two-dimensional full particle simulation of a perpendicular collisionless shock with a shock-rest-frame model
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• Electron Accelerations at High Mach Number Shocks: Two-Dimensional Particle-In-Cell Simulations in Various Parameter Regimes
• Relativistic Electron Shock Drift Acceleration in Low Mach Number Galaxy Cluster Shocks
• PIC Simulation Methods for Cosmic Radiation and Plasma Instabilities
• Kinetic simulation of magnetic field generation and collisionless shock formation in expanding laboratory plasmas
• Electron Pre-Acceleration at Nonrelativistic High-Mach-Number Perpendicular Shocks
• Electrostatic turbulence and Debye-scale structures in collisionless shocks
• The Acceleration of Electrons at Collisionless Shocks Moving Through a Turbulent Magnetic Field
• Nonrelativistic parallel shocks in unmagnetized and weakly magnetized plasmas
• Non-relativistic perpendicular shocks modeling young supernova remnants: nonstationary dynamics and particle acceleration at forward and reverse shocks
• Parametric study of non-relativistic electrostatic shocks and the structure of their transition layer
• Microinstabilities at perpendicular collisionless shocks: A comparison of full particle simulations with different ion to electron mass ratio
• Dynamics and microinstabilities at perpendicular collisionless shock: A comparison of large-scale two-dimensional full particle simulations with different ion to electron mass ratio
• Cross-scale coupling at a perpendicular collisionless shock
• Magnetic field amplification and electron acceleration to near-energy equipartition with ions by a mildly relativistic quasi-parallel plasma protoshock
• Electron shock drift acceleration at a low-Mach-number, low-plasma-beta quasi-perpendicular shock
• Structure of a strong supernova shock wave and rapid electron acceleration confined in its transition region
• Mach number and plasma beta dependence of the ion temperature perpendicular to the external magnetic field in the transition region of perpendicular collisionless shocks