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Journal ArticleDOI

Evolution of ion distributions across the nearly perpendicular bow shock: Specularly and non‐specularly reflected‐gyrating ions

TLDR
The ion density decreases by up to two orders of magnitude at the forward end of the foot of the bow shock profile, suggesting that the ions are reflected by the shock specularly, and may enhance downstream ion thermalization.
Abstract
Data from ISEE 1 and 2 spacecraft were used to study the evolution of the ion distributions in the perpendicular terrestrial bow shock. The plasma data were taken during passage of the spacecraft downstream of and through the shock. Solar wind ions had velocities ranging from Mach 2-12.4, and reflected ions featured a relative density of 1-3 percent of the solar wind density at Mach 2 to 15-25 percent at Mach 8-12. Computer simulations have indicated that the ions provide essential dissipation at the shock and gyrate about the magnetic field lines in the plasma rest frame at a speed twice that of the normal incident solar wind flow. The ion density decreases by up to two orders of magnitude at the forward end of the foot of the shock profile, suggesting that the ions are reflected by the shock specularly, and may enhance downstream ion thermalization.

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Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI

Interstellar pickup ions and quasi-perpendicular shocks: Implications for the termination shock and interplanetary shocks

TL;DR: In this article, the acceleration of pickup ions by repeated reflections from the electrostatic cross shock potential of a quasi-perpendicular shock is presented, and the acceleration mechanism, multiply reflected ion (MRI) acceleration, offers a resolution to the issue of injecting pickup ions into an efficient particle energization scheme, and is found to be inversely proportional to ion mass and proportional to charge.
Journal ArticleDOI

Electromagnetic ion/ion instabilities and their consequences in space plasmas: A review

TL;DR: In this article, a review of recent research on the theory and computer simulations of electromagnetic ion/ion instabilities and their consequences in space plasmas is presented. But the authors do not consider the effects of these instabilities on the dynamics of the space physics regimes which display enhanced fluctuations due to them.
Book ChapterDOI

A quarter century of collisionless shock research

TL;DR: In this paper, a review highlights conceptual issues that have both governed and reflected the direction of collisionless shock research in the past quarter century, including MHD waves and their steepening, the MHD Rankine-Hugoniot relations, the supercritical shock transition, nonlinear oscillatory wave trains, ion sound anomalous resistivity and the resistive-dispersive transition for subcritical shocks, ion reflection and the structure of supercritical quasi-perpendicular shocks, the earth's foreshock, quasi-parallel shocks, and finally, shock acceleration processes.
Journal ArticleDOI

The mirror and ion cyclotron anisotropy instabilities

TL;DR: In this paper, the dispersion equation for fully electromagnetic waves and instabilities at arbitrary directions of propagation relative to a background magnetic field B(0) in a homogeneous Vlasov plasma is solved numerically for bi-Maxwellian particle distributions.
Journal ArticleDOI

Ion thermalization in quasi-perpendicular shocks involving reflected ions

TL;DR: In this article, the ion thermalization mechanism downstream of the Earth's bow shock is examined by means of plasma and magnetic field data from the AMPTE/IRM spacecraft which include three-dimensional ion distributions, plasma fluid parameters derived every ∼4.3 s, and spectra of transverse and parallel magnetic fluctuations up to 16 Hz.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI

Average and unusual locations of the Earth's magnetopause and bow shock

TL;DR: The average and unusual locations of magnetopause and bow shock positions observed by IMP spacecraft were analyzed in this paper, showing that the bow shock position is unusual for the Earth's magnetic field.
Journal ArticleDOI

The structure of perpendicular bow shocks

TL;DR: In this article, a hybrid simulation model with kinetic ions, massless fluid electrons, and phenomenological resistivity is used to investigate the perpendicular configuration of the bow shocks of the earth and other planets.
Journal ArticleDOI

The ISEE 1 and 2 Fluxgate Magnetometers

TL;DR: The ISEE 1 and 2 spacecraft have 12-bit analog-to-digital conversion plus averaging to return 16-bit overlapped averages with a particularly attractive transfer function.
Journal ArticleDOI

Observations of two distinct populations of bow shock ions in the upstream solar wind

TL;DR: In this article, the LASL/MPI fast plasma experiments on ISEE 1 and 2 reveal the presence of two distinct and mutually exclusive populations of low energy (no more than 40 keV) ions apparently accelerated at the bow shock.
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