Collisionless plasma expansion in the presence of a dipole magnetic field

Abstract

The collisionless interaction of an expanding high-energy plasma cloud with a magnetized background plasma in the presence of a dipole magnetic field is examined in the framework of a 2D3V hybrid (kinetic ions and massless fluid electrons) model. The retardation of the plasma cloud and the dynamics of the perturbed electromagnetic fields and the background plasma are studied for high Alfven-Mach numbers using the particle-in-cell method. It is shown that the plasma cloud expands excluding the ambient magnetic field and the background plasma to form a diamagnetic cavity which is accompanied by the generation of a collisionless shock wave. The energy exchange between the plasma cloud and the background plasma is also studied and qualitative agreement with the analytical model suggested previously is obtained.

10 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Hybrid simulations of mini-magnetospheres in the laboratory
• The moving boundary problem in the presence of a dipole magnetic field

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Self-similar analytical model of the plasma expansion in a magnetic field
• An exact solution of the moving boundary problem for the expansion of a plasma cylinder in a magnetic field
• Resistive MHD model for cylindrical plasma expansion in a magnetic field
• An exact solution of the moving boundary problem for the relativistic plasma expansion in a dipole magnetic field