Particle simulation study of electron heating by counterstreaming ion beams ahead of supernova remnant shocks

Abstract

The growth and saturation of Buneman-type instabilities is examined with a particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation for parameters that are representative for the foreshock region of fast supernova remnant (SNR) shocks. A dense ion beam and the electrons correspond to the upstream plasma and a fast ion beam to the shock-reflected ions. The purpose of the 2D simulation is to identify the nonlinear saturation mechanisms, the electron heating and potential secondary instabilities that arise from anisotropic electron heating and result in the growth of magnetic fields. We confirm that the instabilities between both ion beams and the electrons saturate by the formation of phase space holes by the beam-aligned modes. The slower oblique modes accelerate some electrons, but they can not heat up the electrons significantly before they are trapped by the faster beam-aligned modes. Two circular electron velocity distributions develop, which are centred around the velocity of each ion beam. They develop due to the scattering of the electrons by the electrostatic wave potentials. The growth of magnetic fields is observed, but their amplitude remains low.

18 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion

References in corpus (6)

• Confirmation of strong magnetic field amplification and nuclear cosmic ray acceleration in SN 1006
• Production of Magnetic Turbulence by Cosmic Rays Drifting Upstream of Supernova Remnant Shocks
• Fundamentals of collisionless shocks for astrophysical application, 2. Relativistic shocks
• Absence of Electron Surfing Acceleration in a Two-Dimensional Simulation
• Nonlinear Kinetic Development of the Weibel Instability and the generation of electrostatic coherent structures
• Two-dimensional full particle simulation of a perpendicular collisionless shock with a shock-rest-frame model

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Electron-Ion Temperature Equilibration in Collisionless Shocks: the Supernova Remnant-Solar Wind Connection
• Electron Heating in Low Mach Number Perpendicular shocks. I. Heating Mechanism
• Electron Heating in Low Mach Number Perpendicular shocks. II. Dependence on the Pre-Shock Conditions
• Particle-in-cell simulation of Buneman instability beyond quasilinear saturation