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Density jump as a function of magnetic field for switch-on collisionless shocks in pair plasmas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2022

Antoine Bret Open the ORCID record for Antoine Bret [Opens in a new window]  and
Ramesh Narayan
Antoine Bret
Affiliation:
ETSI Industriales, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 13071 Ciudad Real, Spain Instituto de Investigaciones Energéticas y Aplicaciones Industriales, Campus Universitario de Ciudad Real, 13071 Ciudad Real, Spain
Ramesh Narayan*
Affiliation:
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Harvard University, 60 Garden St., Cambridge, MA 02138, USA Black Hole Initiative at Harvard University, 20 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
*
†Email address for correspondence: [email protected]
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Abstract

The properties of collisionless shocks, like the density jump, are usually derived from magnetohydrodynamics (MHD), where isotropic pressures are assumed. Yet, in a collisionless plasma, an external magnetic field can sustain a stable anisotropy. We have already devised a model for the kinetic history of the plasma through the shock front (J. Plasma Phys., vol. 84, issue 6, 2018, 905840604), allowing to self-consistently compute the downstream anisotropy, and hence the density jump, in terms of the upstream parameters. This model deals with the case of a parallel shock, where the magnetic field is normal to the front both in the upstream and the downstream. Yet, MHD also allows for shock solutions, the so-called switch-on solutions, where the field is normal to the front only in the upstream. This article consists in applying our model to these switch-on shocks. While MHD offers only one switch-on solution within a limited range of Alfvén Mach numbers, our model offers two kinds of solutions within a slightly different range of Alfvén Mach numbers. These two solutions are most likely the outcome of the intermediate and fast MHD shocks under our model. While the intermediate and fast shocks merge in MHD for the parallel case, they do not within our model. For simplicity, the formalism is restricted to non-relativistic shocks in pair plasmas where the upstream is cold.

Keywords

astrophysical plasmasplasma nonlinear phenomenaspace plasma physics
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Plasma Physics , Volume 88 , Issue 3 , June 2022 , 905880320
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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