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American Institute of Physics, Physics of Plasmas, 9(22), p. 092109, 2015

DOI: 10.1063/1.4930212

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Kinetic structures of quasi-perpendicular shocks in global particle-in-cell simulations

This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

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Abstract

We carried out global Particle-in-Cell simulations of the interaction between the solar wind and amagnetosphere to study the kinetic collisionless physics in super-critical quasi-perpendicularshocks. After an initial simulation transient, a collisionless bow shock forms as a result of the interactionof the solar wind and a planet magnetic dipole. The shock ramp has a thickness of approximatelyone ion skin depth and is followed by a trailing wave train in the shock downstream. At thedownstream edge of the bow shock, whistler waves propagate along the magnetic field lines andthe presence of electron cyclotron waves has been identified. A small part of the solar wind ionpopulation is specularly reflected by the shock while a larger part is deflected and heated by theshock. Solar wind ions and electrons are heated in the perpendicular directions. Ions are acceleratedin the perpendicular direction in the trailing wave train region. This work is an initial effort to studythe electron and ion kinetic effects developed near the bow shock in a realistic magnetic fieldconfiguration.