Emergence of MHD structures in a collisionless PIC simulation plasma

Abstract

The expansion of a dense plasma into a dilute plasma across an initially uniform perpendicular magnetic field is followed with a one-dimensional particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation over MHD time scales. The dense plasma expands in the form of a fast rarefaction wave. The accelerated dilute plasma becomes separated from the dense plasma by a tangential discontinuity at its back. A fast magnetosonic shock with the Mach number 1.5 forms at its front. Our simulation demonstrates how wave dispersion widens the shock transition layer into a train of nonlinear fast magnetosonic waves.

5 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Physics of Plasmas

References in corpus (3)

• The microphysics of collisionless shock waves
• On the role of magnetosonic solitons in perpendicular collisionless shock reformation
• Particle-in-cell simulation study of a lower-hybrid shock

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Expansion of a radially symmetric blast shell into a uniformly magnetized plasma
• Two typical collective behaviors of the heavy ions expanding in cold plasma with ambient magnetic field
• Collisionless tangential discontinuity between pair plasma and electron-proton plasma
• Quasi-perpendicular fast magnetosonic shock with wave precursor in collisionless plasma
• Effects of radiative losses on the relativistic jets of high-mass microquasars