The Influence of an Ambient Magnetic Field on Relativistic Collisionless Plasma Shocks.pdfVIP

DRAFT VERSION FEBRUARY 2, 2008 A Preprint typeset using LT X style emulateapj v. 5/14/03 E Received 2004 December 13; accepted 2005 March 15; published 2005 April THE INFLUENCE OF AN AMBIENT MAGNETIC FIELD ON RELATIVISTIC COLLISIONLESS PLASMA SHOCKS CHRISTIAN BUSK HEDEDAL AND KEN -ICHI N ISHIKAWA Niels Bohr Institute, Deptartment of Astrophysics, Juliane Maries Vej 30, 2100 København Ø, Denmark; and National Space Science and Technology Center (NSSTC), Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Team, 320 Sparkman Drive, Huntsville, AL 35805; Draft version February 2, 2008 ABSTRACT Plasma outflows from gamma-ray bursts, supernovae, and relativistic jets, in general, interact with the sur- rounding medium through collisionless shocks. The microphysics of such shocks are still poorly understood, 5 which, potentially, can introduce uncertainties in the interpretation of observations. It is now well established 0 that the Weibel two-stream instability is capable of generating strong electromagnetic fields in the transition re- 0 gion between the jet and the ambient plasma. However, the parameter space of collisionless shocks is vast and 2 still remains unexplored. In this Letter, we focus on how an ambient magnetic field affects the evolution of the electron Weibel instability and the associated shock. Using a particle-in-cell code, we have performed three- r p dimensional numerical experiments on such shocks. We compare simulations in