Strong ion accelerating by collisionless magnetosonic shock wave propagating perpendicular to a magnetic field

A 2-1/2 dimensional fully relativistic, fully electromagnetic particle code is used to study a time evolution of nonlinear magnetosonic pulse propagating in the direction perpendicular to a magnetic field. The pulse is excited by an instantaneous piston acceleration, and evolves totally self-consistently. Large amplitude pulse traps some ions and accelerates them parallel to the wave front. They are detrapped when their velocities become of the order of the sum of the ExB drift velocity and the wave phase velocity, where E is the electric field in the direction of wave propagation. The pulse develops into a quasi-shock wave in a collisionless plasma by a dissipation due to the resonant ion acceleration. Simple nonlinear wave theory for a cold plasma well describes the shock properties observed in the simulation except for the effects of resonant ions. In particular, magnitude of an electric potential across the shock region is derived analytically and is found to be in good agreement with our simulations. The potential jump is proportional to B2, and hence the ExB drift velocity of the trapped ions is proportional to B. (author)