The impact of kinetic effects on the properties of relativistic electron-positron shocks

Abstract

We assess the impact of non-thermally shock-accelerated particles on the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) jump conditions of relativistic shocks. The adiabatic constant is calculated directly from first principle particle-in-cell simulation data, enabling a semi-kinetic approach to improve the standard fluid model and allowing for an identification of the key parameters that define the shock structure. We find that the evolving upstream parameters have a stronger impact than the corrections due to non-thermal particles. We find that the decrease of the upstream bulk speed yields deviations from the standard MHD model up to 10%. Furthermore, we obtain a quantitative definition of the shock transition region from our analysis. For Weibel-mediated shocks the inclusion of a magnetic field in the MHD conservation equations is addressed for the first time.

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Cited by in corpus (7)

• Collisionless Weibel shocks: full formation mechanism and timing
• Collisional behaviors of astrophysical collisionless plasmas
• Kinetic inhibition of MHD-shocks in the vicinity of a parallel magnetic field
• Density jump as a function of magnetic field for collisionless shocks in pair plasmas: the perpendicular case
• Collisionless shock acceleration of quasi-monoenergetic ions in ultra-relativistic regime
• Fermi acceleration in relativistic collisionless plasma shocks correlates with anisotropic energy gains
• Exploring the nature of collisionless shocks under laboratory conditions