Electron Heating in 2D Particle-in-cell Simulations of Quasi-perpendicular Low-beta Shocks

Abstract

Abstract We measure the thermal electron energization in 1D and 2D particle-in-cell simulations of quasi-perpendicular, low-beta (β p = 0.25) collisionless ion–electron shocks with mass ratio m i/m e = 200, fast Mach number M ms = 1 –4, and upstream magnetic field angle θ Bn = 55°–85° from the shock normal n ˆ . It is known that shock electron heating is described by an ambipolar, B -parallel electric potential jump, Δϕ ∥, that scales roughly linearly with the electron temperature jump. Our simulations have Δ ϕ ∥ / ( 0.5 m i u sh 2 ) ∼ 0.1 –0.2 in units of the pre-shock ions’ bulk kinetic energy, in agreement with prior measurements and simulations. Different ways to measure ϕ ∥, including the use of de Hoffmann–Teller frame fields, agree to tens-of-percent accuracy. Neglecting off-diagonal electron pressure tensor terms can lead to a systematic underestimate of ϕ ∥ in our low-β p shocks. We further focus on two θ Bn = 65° shocks: a M s = 4 ( M A = 1.8 ) case with a long, 30d i precursor of whistler waves along n ˆ , and a M s = 7 ( M A = 3.2 ) case with a shorter, 5d i precursor of whistlers oblique to both n ˆ and B ; d i is the ion skin depth. Within the precursors, ϕ ∥ has a secular rise toward the shock along multiple whistler wavelengths and also has localized spikes within magnetic troughs. In a 1D simulation of the M s = 4 , θ Bn = 65° case, ϕ ∥ shows a weak dependence on the electron plasma-to-cyclotron frequency ratio ω pe/Ωce, and ϕ ∥ decreases by a factor of 2 as m i/m e is raised to the true proton–electron value of 1836.