Pickup ion dynamics at quasiperpendicular shock waves

Details Pickup ion dynamics at quasiperpendicular shock waves Pickup ion dynamics at quasiperpendicular shock waves

Jun 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008phdt........24b&link_type=abstract

Proquest Dissertations And Theses 2008. Section 0032, Part 0606 294 pages; [Ph.D. dissertation].United States -- California: Un

Physics

Fluid Dynamics

1

Shock Waves, Pickup Ions, Termination Shock, Multiply Reflected Ions, Burgers' Equation

Scientific paper

The detailed dynamics of pickup ion reflection from the electrostatic potential of a perpendicular collisionless shock is treated at the test particle level. Both shell and filled-shell distributions are considered, the first being a simplification model for the distribution of pickup ions that have been pitch- angle-scattered onto a bispherical shell in velocity space associated with backward and forward traveling Alfvén waves; the second is an extension of the shell but with the interior of the sphere filled in according to the isotropic solar wind, cold neutral gas model of the PUI velocity distribution. Both shell and fill-shell PUI distributions are energized by multiply ion reflection from the cross-shock potential. Efficiently energized hard power law spectra with maximum energy gain depending on the narrowness of the ramp width of the cross shock potential are found. Energized filled-shell spectra are found to be more smooth and, in some narrow ramp cases, more physically plausible then shell. Based on the accelerated pickup ion distributions calculated with respect to individual ion dynamics, source terms for momentum and energy injection at the shock front are introduced into the set of fluid dynamics equations. Integration of the equations yields 'conservation laws' from which the Rankine- Hugoniot jump conditions are derived for shocks mediated by accelerated pickup ions. These perpendicular shocks are found to be strongly sheared with the connection between up and downstream states more severely restricted by the entropy condition then ordinary gas dynamic shocks. Momentum and energy injection at the shock is extended to a weak source description yielding a modified Burgers' equation the derivation of which shows explicitly that particle reflection is a dissipation mechanism for collisionless shocks. The modified Burgers' equation includes a term which is shown to be associated with the shock ramp.

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