Collisionless ablative plasma shocks
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arXiv
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| Hauptverfasser: | , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Veröffentlicht: |
2025
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| _version_ | 1866909599884378112 |
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| author | Zhang, Yanzeng Tang, Xian-Zhu |
| author_facet | Zhang, Yanzeng Tang, Xian-Zhu |
| contents | An ablative plasma shock can emanate from the interface between a cold/dense plasma and a hot/dilute ambient plasma, where the plasma mean-free-path is much longer than the temperature gradient length. The shock is driven by thermal flux from the hot plasma into the cold plasma, primarily through tail electrons mediated by an ambipolar electric field, and it propagates into the ambient hot/dilute plasma. Since the collisional mean-free-path is usually much longer than the Debye length, the ablative plasma shock is mostly collisionless, with the shock front width set by the upstream hot plasma Debye length and the shock speed by the downstream cold plasma sound speed. The shock heating of ions is extremely efficient via collisionless mixing of upstream hot ions and downstream cold ions, both of which have been converted into shock-front-bound flows accelerated by the ambipolar electric field that has a deep potential well anchored inside the shock front. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_01690 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Collisionless ablative plasma shocks Zhang, Yanzeng Tang, Xian-Zhu Plasma Physics High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena An ablative plasma shock can emanate from the interface between a cold/dense plasma and a hot/dilute ambient plasma, where the plasma mean-free-path is much longer than the temperature gradient length. The shock is driven by thermal flux from the hot plasma into the cold plasma, primarily through tail electrons mediated by an ambipolar electric field, and it propagates into the ambient hot/dilute plasma. Since the collisional mean-free-path is usually much longer than the Debye length, the ablative plasma shock is mostly collisionless, with the shock front width set by the upstream hot plasma Debye length and the shock speed by the downstream cold plasma sound speed. The shock heating of ions is extremely efficient via collisionless mixing of upstream hot ions and downstream cold ions, both of which have been converted into shock-front-bound flows accelerated by the ambipolar electric field that has a deep potential well anchored inside the shock front. |
| title | Collisionless ablative plasma shocks |
| topic | Plasma Physics High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.01690 |