Resonant Particle Backscattering of a Shock Wave

Abstract

A collisionless shock wave is treated as a streaming plasma instability in the interstellar medium (ISM). We assume that in a steady state, this instability propagates through the ISM as a self-driven plasma instability, whereby the parameters of the instability are determined such that it causes density and velocity jumps as well as isotropization of the particle velocities, which then must be in accordance with MHD theory. The process of resonant interaction and particle scattering off such instability and their backscattering to an upstream region is simulated. We find that some ISM particles bounce off a shock and thus become suprathermal and eligible to enter the process of acceleration to cosmic ray energies by the mechanism of diffusive shock acceleration.

arXiv commentConference proceedings: Cosmic Ray Origin - Beyond the Standard Models, San Vito di Cadore, 2016

References in corpus (4)

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• Simulations and Theory of Ion Injection at Non-relativistic Collisionless Shocks
• Alfven wave coupled with flow-driven fluid instability in interpenetrating plasmas