Open AccessOn microinstabilities in the foot of high Mach number perpendicular shocks
Author(s) -
Matsukiyo S.,
Scholer M.
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
journal of geophysical research: space physics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.67
H-Index - 298
eISSN - 2156-2202
pISSN - 0148-0227
DOI - 10.1029/2005ja011409
Subject(s) - instability , ion , physics , mach number , perpendicular , shock (circulatory) , shock wave , electron , excited state , plasma , atomic physics , computational physics , mechanics , geometry , nuclear physics , medicine , mathematics , quantum mechanics
Microinstabilities excited in the foot of a supercritical perpendicular shock wave are investigated. A two‐dimensional full particle simulation with periodic boundary conditions in both directions using the physical ion to electron mass ratio is performed as a proxy for the foot region where incoming and specularly reflected ions overlap. The simulation shows that six types of different instabilities are excited in a time period shorter than ion gyroperiod of the reflected ions. The most dominant instability is the modified two‐stream instability, which leads to strong parallel electron heating through a so‐called two step instability and to ion phase space holes.