Accelerationatshockfronts.Lecture2-SchoolofPhysics.PDFVIP

Acceleration at shock fronts. Lecture 2 D. B. MELROSE School of Physics, Unaversity of Sydney - Sydney NSW 2006, Australia 1. - Introduction Acceleration at shock fronts plays a central role in current ideas on acceleration of cosmic rays and of the energetic electrons in synchrotron sources. There is direct, detailed evidence for acceleration at shock fronts within the heliosphere. There are two different acceleration mechanisms at shocks: shock-drift acceleration (SDA) and diffusive shock acceleration (DSA). Of the two, DSA is much the more important in astrophysics. Both mechanisms are discussed in this lecture, following a brief review of the theory of shocks in magnetized fluids. 2. - Shock waves Shock theory relates the plasma properties behind the shock (downstream, sub- script 2) to those ahead of the shock (upstream, subscript I), cf. fig. 1.In the absence of a magnetic field only one variable is needed to characterize a shock, and it is usually chosen to be the ratio of the flow speed to the (upstream) sound speed, called the Mach number, M = ul/~l.Two independent parameters are needed to describe a shock in a magnetized plasma. These are usually chosen to be the AlfvBnic Mach number, defined in terms of the (upstream) AlfvBn speed, MA = ul/vA1,and the angle, 8, between the upstream flow velocity and the upstream magnetic field. The ratio ,B = C~~/V;,in the unshocked plasma is another independent parameter and in many astrophysical plasmas an appropriate simplifying assumption is that this parameter is small, ,B 1. A shock front may be described in a variety of inertial frames. One frame is that in / which the upstream plasma is at rest, and the shock front is approachin