Plasma Physics (Physics/ECE/NE 922) Seminars |
Events on Monday, October 15th, 2018
- Relativistic Hybrid Simulations of Cosmic Ray Generation and Transport
- Time: 12:05 pm
- Place: 2241 Chamberlin Hall
- Speaker: Dr. Colby Haggerty, University of Chicago
- Abstract: The generation and transport of Cosmic Rays (CR) is an inherently multiscale phenomenon. Linking the dynamics of a cold thermal background plasma with low density, relativistic CRs through the shared magnetic field requires modeling the physics of both populations. To better study these problems, we have developed a kinetic ion, fluid electron hybrid code to include relativistic ion dynamics (dHybridR). With dHybridR, we perform the first simulations of non relativistic collisionless shock, self-consistently accelerating relativistic ions. We document the effects of the transition of accelerated particles to relativistic velocities and we show that the shock develops a CR induced precursor which modifies the macroscopic shock quantities (i.e. compression ratio and shock speed). In addition to CR generation, we present simulations of CR transport and the as sociated streaming instabilities. We show that for weak CR currents, simulations initially agree with linear theory and that the thermal population is indirectly heated through landau damping.