Relativistic Photon Mediated Shocks

Understand

A system of equations governing the structure of a steady, relativistic radiation dominated shock is derived, starting from the general form of the transfer equation obeyed by the photon distribution function.

• Closure is obtained by truncating the system of moment equations at some order.
• The anisotropy of the photon distribution function inside the shock is shown to increase with increasing shock velocity, approaching nearly perfect beaming at upstream Lorentz factors $\Gamma_{-}>>1$.
• Solutions of the shock equations are presented for some range of upstream conditions.