Kinematic Collisionless Relaxation of Ions in Supercritical Shocks

We show that kinematic collisionless relaxation in the macroscopic electric and magnetic fields plays the main role in the formation of the downstream ion distributions in a super-critical shock with ion reflection present. It is done by comparison of a theoretically predicted magnetic profile with...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Michael Gedalin
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2019-08-01
Series:Frontiers in Physics
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fphy.2019.00114/full
Description
Summary:We show that kinematic collisionless relaxation in the macroscopic electric and magnetic fields plays the main role in the formation of the downstream ion distributions in a super-critical shock with ion reflection present. It is done by comparison of a theoretically predicted magnetic profile with the magnetic profile of a shocks observed by MMS mission. It is shown that pressure balance remains the main constraint for the shock stability.
ISSN:2296-424X