# Formation of collisionless shocks in magnetized plasma interaction with kinetic-scale obstacles

## TL;DR

This study uses advanced simulations to explore how tiny magnetic obstacles in plasma can generate collisionless shocks, revealing the importance of obstacle size, magnetic orientation, and plasma conditions for shock formation.

## Contribution

It demonstrates the conditions under which miniature magnetized shocks form, highlighting the role of obstacle size, magnetic orientation, and plasma parameters through detailed 2D and 3D simulations.

## Key findings

- Obstacle size determines shock formation threshold
- Magnetic field orientation affects shock development
- Miniature shocks are feasible in laboratory conditions

## Abstract

We investigate the formation of collisionless magnetized shocks triggered by the interaction between magnetized plasma flows and miniature-sized (order of plasma kinetic-scales) magnetic obstacles resorting to massively parallel, full particle-in-cell simulations, including the electron kinetics. The critical obstacle size to generate a compressed plasma region ahead of these objects is determined by independently varying the magnitude of the dipolar magnetic moment and the plasma magnetization. We find that the effective size of the obstacle depends on the relative orientation between the dipolar and plasma internal magnetic fields, and we show that this may be critical to form a shock in small-scale structures. We study the microphysics of the magnetopause in different magnetic field configurations in 2D and compare the results with full 3D simulations. Finally, we evaluate the parameter range where such miniature magnetized shocks can be explored in laboratory experiments.