Energy Spectrum of Energetic Particles Accelerated by Shock Waves: From Focused Transport to Diffusive Acceleration

Details Energy Spectrum of Energetic Particles Accelerated by Shock Waves: From Focused Transport to Diffusive Acceleration Energy Spectrum of Energetic Particles Accelerated by Shock Waves: From Focused Transport to Diffusive Acceleration

Sep 2011

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011apj...738..168z&link_type=abstract

The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 738, Issue 2, article id. 168 (2011).

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

1

Acceleration Of Particles, Cosmic Rays, Shock Waves

Scientific paper

The focused transport equation (FTE) includes all the necessary physics for modeling the shock acceleration of energetic particles with a unified description of first-order Fermi acceleration, shock drift acceleration, and shock surfing acceleration. It can treat the acceleration and transport of particles with an anisotropic distribution. In this study, the energy spectrum of pickup ions accelerated at shocks of various obliquities is investigated based on the FTE. We solve the FTE by using a stochastic approach. The shock acceleration leads to a two-component energy spectrum. The low-energy component of the spectrum is made up of particles that interact with shock one to a few times. For these particles, the pitch angle distribution is highly anisotropic, and the energy spectrum is variable depending on the momentum and pitch angle of injected particles. At high energies, the spectrum approaches a power law consistent with the standard diffusive shock acceleration (DSA) theory. For a parallel shock, the high-energy component of the power-law spectrum, with the spectral index being the same as the prediction of DSA theory, starts just a few times the injection speed. For an oblique or quasi-perpendicular shock, the high-energy component of the spectrum exhibits a double power-law distribution: a harder power-law spectrum followed by another power-law spectrum with a slope the same as the spectral index of DSA. The shock acceleration will eventually go into the DSA regime at higher energies even if the anisotropy is not small. The intensity of the energy spectrum given by the FTE, in the high-energy range where particles get efficient acceleration in the DSA regime, is different from that given by the standard DSA theory for the same injection source. We define the injection efficiency η as the ratio between them. For a parallel shock, the injection efficiency is less than 1, but for an oblique shock or a quasi-perpendicular shock it could be greater.

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