Density-Transition Scale at Quasiperpendicular Collisionless Shocks

Details Density-Transition Scale at Quasiperpendicular Collisionless Shocks Density-Transition Scale at Quasiperpendicular Collisionless Shocks

Dec 2003

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2003phrvl..91z5004b&link_type=abstract

Physical Review Letters, vol. 91, Issue 26, id. 265004

Physics

20

Shock Waves And Discontinuities, Planetary Bow Shocks, Interplanetary Shocks

Scientific paper

Measurements of a spacecraft floating potential, on the four Cluster spacecraft, are used as a proxy for electron plasma density to study, for the first time, the macroscopic density transition scale at 98crossings of the quasiperpendicular terrestrial bow shock. A timing analysis gives shock speeds and normals; the shock speed is used to convert the temporal measurement to a spatial one. A hyperbolic tangent function is fitted to each density transition, which captures the main shock transition, but not overshoot or undershoot nor foot features. We find that, at a low Mach number M, the density transition is consistent with both ion inertial scales c/ωpi and convected gyroradii vsh,n/Ωci,2, while at M≥4 5 only the convected gyroradius is the preferred scale for the shock density transition and takes the value L≈0.4vsh,n/Ωci,2.

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