Property of downstream turbulence driven by the special relativistic shock-clump interaction

Abstract

Three-dimensional special relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations are performed to investigate properties of the downstream turbulence generated by the interaction between a relativistic shock wave and multiple clumps. We analyze the properties of the downstream turbulence by performing the Helmholtz decomposition. It is shown that, in contrast to the non-relativistic shock case, the amplitude of compressive modes is comparable to that of solenoidal modes for the relativistic shock. In addition, many reflected shocks propagate in the downstream region. The strength of the compressive mode, the solenoidal mode, the reflected shock waves, and the amplified magnetic field depend on the amplitude of the upstream density fluctuations. Our simulation results suggest that the wide distribution of the ratio of the magnetic energy to the shock kinetic energy, ${\epsilon }_B$, in gamma-ray burst afterglows is due to the diversity of the gamma-ray burst environment. Furthermore, the inhomogeneity of density around high-energy astrophysical objects affects the spectrum of accelerated particles because the reflected shock and turbulence can inject and accelerate non-thermal particles in the shock downstream region. The probability distribution of the downstream quantities, power spectra of turbulence, and vortex generation are also analyzed and discussed in this work.

12 pages, 12 figures, submitted to MNRAS

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Cited by in corpus (2)

• The most distant optically polarised GRB afterglow: GRB 240419A at z = 5.178
• Collisionless shocks having relativistic velocities in relativistically hot plasmas