Low Mach-number collisionless electrostatic shocks and associated ion acceleration

Pusztai, Istvan; TenBarge, Jason; Csapó, Aletta N.; Juno, James; Hakim, Ammar; Yi, Longqing; Fulop, Tunde

doi:10.1088/1361-6587/aaa2cc

Title: Low Mach-number collisionless electrostatic shocks and associated ion acceleration

Journal Article · Tue Dec 19 00:00:00 EST 2017 · Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6587/aaa2cc· OSTI ID:1414905

^[1];

^[2]; Csapó, Aletta N. ^[1]; Juno, James ^[3]; Hakim, Ammar ^[4]; Yi, Longqing ^[1]; Fulop, Tunde ^[1]

Chalmers Univ. of Technology, Goteborg (Sweden). Dept. of Physics
Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States). Inst. for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics; Princeton Univ., NJ (United States). Dept. of Astrophysical Sciences; Princeton Plasma Physics Lab. (PPPL), Princeton, NJ (United States)
Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States). Inst. for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics
Princeton Plasma Physics Lab. (PPPL), Princeton, NJ (United States)

The existence and properties of low Mach-number (M >~ 1) electrostatic collisionless shocks are investigated with a semi-analytical solution for the shock structure. We show that the properties of the shock obtained in the semi-analytical model can be well reproduced in fully kinetic Eulerian Vlasov-Poisson simulations, where the shock is generated by the decay of an initial density discontinuity. By using this semi-analytical model, we also study the effect of electron-to-ion temperature ratio and presence of impurities on both the maximum shock potential and Mach number. We find that even a small amount of impurities can influence the shock properties significantly, including the reflected light ion fraction, which can change several orders of magnitude. Electrostatic shocks in heavy ion plasmas reflect most of the hydrogen impurity ions.

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Research Organization:: Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), Princeton, NJ (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE; National Science Foundation (NSF)

Grant/Contract Number:: AGS-1622306; ERC-2014-CoG 647121; 330-2014-6313; AC02-09CH11466

OSTI ID:: 1414905

Journal Information:: Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion, Vol. 60, Issue 3; ISSN 0741-3335

Publisher:: IOP ScienceCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Cited by: 14 works

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Effect of a weak ion collisionality on the dynamics of kinetic electrostatic shocks Sundström, Andréas; Juno, James; TenBarge, Jason M. arXiv https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1810.02128	text	January 2018
A Deep Dive into the Distribution Function: Understanding Phase Space Dynamics with Continuum Vlasov-Maxwell Simulations Juno, James arXiv https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2005.13539	preprint	January 2020