Ion-electron instabilities in the precursor of weakly magnetized, transrelativistic shocks

Abstract

Collisionless shocks are known to induce turbulence via upstream ion reflection within the precursor region. This study elucidates the properties of electrostatic and electromagnetic instabilities, exploring their role over the transrelativistic range. Notably, the growth of oblique Buneman waves and previously overlooked, secondary small-scale ion-electron instabilities is observed to be particularly promoted in the relativistic regime. Furthermore, the growth of large-scale electromagnetic modes encounters severe limitations in any cold, baryon-loaded precursor. It is argued that electron pre-heating in electrostatic modes may alleviate these constraints, facilitating the subsequent growth of large-scale filamentation modes in the precursor of transrelativistic shocks.

15 pages

References in corpus (7)

• Multi-messenger Observations of a Binary Neutron Star Merger
• A kilonova as the electromagnetic counterpart to a gravitational-wave source
• Illuminating Gravitational Waves: A Concordant Picture of Photons from a Neutron Star Merger
• Magnetic field evolution in relativistic unmagnetized collisionless shocks
• Electron Shock Surfing Acceleration in Multidimensions: Two-dimensional Particle-In-Cell Simulation of Collisionless Perpendicular Shock
• Oblique Ion Two-Stream Instability in the Foot Region of a Collisionless Shock
• Origin of intense electron heating in relativistic blast waves