Magnetic ramp scale at supercritical perpendicular collisionless shocks: Full particle electromagnetic simulations

Supercritical perpendicular collisionless shocks are known to exhibit foot, ramp, and overshoot structures. The shock ramp structure is in a smaller scale in contrast to other microstructures (foot and overshoot) within the shock front. One-dimensional full particle simulations of strictly perpendicular shocks over wide ranges of ion beta βi, Alfvén Mach number MA, and ion-to-electron mass ratio mi/me are presented to investigate the impact of plasma parameters on the shock ramp scale. Main results are (1) the ramp scale can be as small as several electron inertial length. (2) The simulations suggest that in a regime below the critical ion beta value, the shock front undergoes a periodic self-reformation and the shock ramp scale is time-varying. At higher ion beta values, the shock front self-reformation is smeared. At still higher ion beta value, the motion of reflected ions is quite diffuse so that they can lead to a quasi-steady shock ramp. Throughout the above three conditions, the shock ramp thickness increases with βi. (3) The increase (decrease) in Mach number and the decrease (increase) in the beta value have almost equivalent impact on the state (i.e., stationary or nonstationary) of the shock ramp. Both of front and ramp thicknesses are increased with MA