Shock wave

About: Shock wave is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 36184 publications have been published within this topic receiving 635848 citations. The topic is also known as: Shock waves & shockwave.

Unified Shock Profile in a Plasma

Abstract: Previously [P.N.Hu, Phys. Fluids 9, 89 (1966)], a universal monotonic profile was found for a weak plasma shock propagating perpendicular to a magnetic field using an elaborate set of moment equations which included electron and ion viscosity, coupled electron and ion heat conduction, thermal diffusion, and resistivity, together with distinct Hall terms for the resistivity, stress, and heat flow. Inclusion of an additional term related to electron inertia now gives a one‐parameter family of profiles which spans the entire range from collision dominated monotonic profiles to damped oscillatory profiles and the limiting collisionless case of purely oscillatory and solitary wave profiles.

Laser-excited Mach cones in a dusty plasma crystal

Abstract: Experimental studies of the formation and structure of Mach cones in a plasma crystal are presented. Plasma crystals are ordered structures of charged microspheres trapped in the sheath of an rf discharge plasma. Using a monolayer crystal with a hexagonal lattice, Mach cones were excited by the radiation pressure of a focused laser beam. The beam was swept at a supersonic speed through the crystal, in a controlled and repeatable manner. A multiple Mach cone structure was observed, with at least three distinct Mach cones. The Mach angle relation was verified over a wide range of Mach numbers, for both the first and second cones. The sound speed, measured from the first Mach angle, was found to increase with the particle number density. Two methods of determining the particle charge and screening distance are developed, making use of the sound speed and an assumption of a Yukawa interparticle potential. Molecular-dynamics simulations of the experiment were carried out, using a monolayer of particles interacting through a Yukawa potential, and these show close agreement with the experiment.

Particle Acceleration in Supernova Remnants and the Production of Thermal and Nonthermal Radiation

Abstract: Efficient cosmic-ray production can have a significant effect on the evolution and X-ray emission from SNRs. Using hydrodynamic simulations coupled to diffusive shock acceleration, we produce thermal and nonthermal forward-shock photon spectra. For a given ambient density and explosion energy, we find that the position of the forward shock at a given age is a strong function of the acceleration efficiency, providing a signature of cosmic-ray production. Using an approximate treatment for the ionization state of the plasma, we investigate the effects of slow versus rapid heating of the postshock electrons on the ratio of thermal to nonthermal X-ray emission at the forward shock. We also investigate the effects of magnetic field strength on the observed spectrum for efficient cosmic-ray acceleration. The primary effect of a large field is a flattening of the nonthermal spectrum in the soft X-ray band. X-ray spectral index measurements may thus be indicators of the postshock magnetic field strength. The predicted gamma-ray flux from inverse Compton (IC) scattering and neutral pion decay is strongly affected by the ambient conditions, and for the parameters used in our examples, the IC emission at E ~ 1 TeV exceeds that from pion decay, although at both lower and higher energies this trend is reversed for cases of high ambient density. More importantly, high magnetic fields produce a steepening of the electron spectrum over a wide energy range, which may make it more difficult to differentiate between IC and pion-decay emission solely by spectral shape.

The Efficient Acceleration of Thermal Protons by Perpendicular Shocks

Abstract: The physics of charged-particle acceleration from near-thermal to much higher energies by collisionless shocks is investigated using large-scale self-consistent plasma simulations. The focus here is on acceleration at shocks that move normal to the average magnetic field. It is shown that a fraction of thermal protons incident on a perpendicular shock are readily accelerated to energies much higher than the ram energy of the incident plasma. This indicates that there is not an injection problem at perpendicular shocks. It is found that some (initially) thermal protons are reflected by the shock and move upstream along magnetic field lines that are multiply connected to other locations on the shock. This leads to efficient acceleration and results in a distribution function, averaged over a large spatial region downstream of the shock, having a high-energy tail that originates directly from the thermal population. It can be concluded from our results that perpendicular shocks are important sites of particle acceleration in a wide variety of astrophysical plasmas.