Particle Acceleration in Relativistic Magnetized Collisionless Electron-Ion Shocks

Understand

We investigate shock structure and particle acceleration in relativistic magnetized collisionless electron-ion shocks by means of 2.5D particle-in-cell simulations with ion-to-electron mass ratios (m_i/m_e) ranging from 16 to 1000.

• We explore a range of inclination angles between the pre-shock magnetic field and the shock normal.
• In "subluminal" shocks, where relativistic particles can escape ahead of the shock along the magnetic field lines, ions are efficiently accelerated via a Fermi-like mechanism.
• The downstream ion spectrum consists of a relativistic Maxwellian and a high-energy power-law tail, which contains ~5% of ions and ~30% of ion energy.