The impact of kinetic effects on the properties of relativistic electron-positron shocks

• Autor(a) principal: Stockem, A.
• Data de Publicação: 2012
• Outros Autores: Fiuza, F., Fonseca, R. A., Silva, L. O.
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/7109; https://ciencia.iscte-iul.pt/id/ci-pub-11206

We assess the impact of non-thermally shock-accelerated particles on the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) jump conditions of relativistic shocks. The adiabatic constant is calculated directly from first-principles particle-in-cell simulation data, enabling a semi-kinetic approach to improve the standard fluid model and allowing for an identification of the key parameters that define the shock structure. We find that the evolving upstream parameters have a stronger impact than the corrections due to non-thermal particles. We find that the decrease in the upstream bulk speed result in deviations from the standard MHD model up to 10%. Furthermore, we obtain a quantitative definition of the shock transition region from our analysis. For Weibel-mediated shocks the inclusion of a magnetic field in the MHD conservation equations is addressed for the first time.