F. Vidal et al., ION KINETIC SIMULATIONS OF THE FORMATION AND PROPAGATION OF A PLANAR COLLISIONAL SHOCK-WAVE IN A PLASMA, Physics of fluids. B, Plasma physics, 5(9), 1993, pp. 3182-3190
Ion kinetic simulations of the formation and propagation of planar sho
ck waves in a hydrogen plasma have been performed at Mach numbers 2 an
d 5, and compared to fluid simulations. At Mach 5, the shock transitio
n is far wider than expected on the basis of comparative fluid calcula
tions. This enlargement is due to hot ions streaming from the hot plas
ma into the cold plasma and is found to be limited by the electron pre
heating layer, essentially because electron-ion collisions slow down t
hese energetic ions very effectively in the cold upstream region. Doub
le-humped ion velocity distributions formed in the transition region,
which are particularly prominent during the shock formation, are found
not to be unstable to any electrostatic mode, due to electron Landau
damping. At Mach numbers of 2 and below, no such features are seen in
velocity space, and there is very little difference between the profil
es from the kinetic and fluid simulations.