The Sawtooth Effect on Particle Acceleration at Quasi-Perpendicular Shocks in Random Magnetic Fields

Details The Sawtooth Effect on Particle Acceleration at Quasi-Perpendicular Shocks in Random Magnetic Fields The Sawtooth Effect on Particle Acceleration at Quasi-Perpendicular Shocks in Random Magnetic Fields

Dec 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006agufmsh43b1517p&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2006, abstract #SH43B-1517

Physics

7514 Energetic Particles (2114), 7845 Particle Acceleration, 7851 Shock Waves (4455), 7863 Turbulence (4490)

Scientific paper

It is now generally recognized that the turbulent random walk of magnetic field lines plays an important role in particle acceleration at quasi-perpendicular shocks. To specifically examine the role of the field line random walk, we determine analytic expressions for distributions of the number of field line-shock crossings, the distance between crossings, and the crossing angle, which are verified using computer simulations of turbulent magnetic fields. We consider particles sufficiently fast that transport along the field is more rapid than the field line convection. The classical view of particle motion guided by the mean field and its angle θBn with respect to the shock normal can be refined to account for the guiding field lines crossing back and forth like a sawtooth blade. While the multiple field line-shock crossings can enhance the particle acceleration, a stronger effect is that the turbulent motion biases the distribution of crossing angles to smaller angles (relative to the shock normal), so the net result of the sawtooth motion is less effective particle acceleration, and a softer steady-state spectrum, than expected in the classical view. Partially supported by the Rachadapisek Sompoj Fund of Chulalongkorn University, the Thailand Research Fund, and NASA Grant NNG05GG83G.

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