Conditions of structural transition for collisionless electrostatic shock

Abstract

Collisionless shock acceleration, which transfers localized particle energies to non-thermal energetic particles via electromagnetic potential, is ubiquitous in space plasma. We investigate dynamics of collisionless electrostatic shocks that appear at interface of two plasma slabs with different pressures using one-dimensional particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations and find that the shock structure transforms to a double-layer structure at the high density gradient. The threshold condition of the structure transformation is identified as density ratio of the two plasma slabs $\Gamma$ $\sim 40$ regardless of the temperature ratio between them. We then update the collisionless shock model that takes into account density expansion effects caused by a rarefaction wave to improve the prediction of the critical Mach numbers. The new critical Mach numbers are benchmarked by PIC simulations for a wide range of $\Gamma$. Furthermore, we introduce a semi-analytical approach to forecast the shock velocity just from the initial conditions based on a new concept of the accelerated fraction $\alpha$.