Electron Heating in Low Mach Number Perpendicular shocks. I. Heating Mechanism

TL;DR

This study uses particle-in-cell simulations to investigate how electrons are irreversibly heated in low Mach number perpendicular shocks, revealing key mechanisms involving temperature anisotropy and wave growth that break adiabatic invariance.

Contribution

The paper introduces a detailed simulation-based analysis of electron heating mechanisms in low Mach number shocks, highlighting the roles of anisotropy and wave instabilities, with an analytical model supporting the findings.

Findings

Electron anisotropy exceeds whistler instability threshold.

Whistler wave growth breaks electron adiabatic invariance.

Electron heating efficiency weakly depends on mass ratio.

Abstract

Recent X-ray observations of merger shocks in galaxy clusters have shown that the post-shock plasma is two-temperature, with the protons hotter than the electrons. By means of two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations, we study the physics of electron irreversible heating in perpendicular low Mach number shocks, for a representative case with sonic Mach number of 3 and plasma beta of 16. We find that two basic ingredients are needed for electron entropy production: (i) an electron temperature anisotropy, induced by field amplification coupled to adiabatic invariance; and (ii) a mechanism to break the electron adiabatic invariance itself. In shocks, field amplification occurs at two major sites: at the shock ramp, where density compression leads to an increase of the frozen-in field; and farther downstream, where the shock-driven proton temperature anisotropy generates strong proton cyclotron and mirror modes. The electron temperature anisotropy induced by field amplification exceeds the threshold of the electron whistler instability. The growth of whistler waves breaks the electron adiabatic invariance, and allows for efficient entropy production. We find that the electron heating efficiency displays only a weak dependence on mass ratio (less than 30 percent drop, as we increase the mass ratio from 49 up to 1600). We develop an analytical model of electron irreversible heating and show that it is in excellent agreement with our simulation results.