This book provides a systematic treatment of shock waves in high-temperature collisionless plasmas as are encountered in near Earth space and astrophysics. It offers a unique and excellently illustrated course on shock wave physics and applications.

The present book provides a contemporary systematic treatment of shock waves in high-temperature collisionless plasmas as are encountered in near Earth space and in Astrophysics. It consists of two parts. Part I develops the complete theory of shocks in dilute hot plasmas under the assumption of absence of collisions among the charged particles when the interaction is mediated solely by the self-consistent electromagnetic fields. Such shocks are naturally magnetised implying that the magnetic field plays an important role in their evolution and dynamics. This part treats subcritical shocks which dissipate flow energy by generating anomalous resistance or viscosity. The main emphasis is, however, on super-critical shocks where the anomalous dissipation is insufficient to retard the upstream flow. These shocks, depending on the direction of the upstream magnetic field, are distinguished as quasi-perpendicular and quasi-parallel shocks which exhibit different behaviours, reflecting particles back upstream and generating high electromagnetic wave intensities. Particle acceleration and turbulence at such shocks become possible and important. Part II treats planetary bow shocks and the famous Heliospheric Termination shock as examples of two applications of the theory developed in part I.

Presents the first comprehensive book on collisionless shocks since the 1980s Offers a unique and excellently illustrated course on shock wave physics and applications Provides an in-depth look at shocks and serves as an almost complete reference for space scientists and astrophysicists

Autorentext

André Balogh is Emeritus Professor of Space Physics in Imperial College London and a past Director of the International Space Science Institute, Bern, Switzerland. He has participated in numerous scientific space missions since the mid 1960s and has been a Principal Investigator on the Ulysses and Cluster missions. His principal research interest is the observation and study of magnetic fields in the heliosphere and in planetary environments. He is author and cöauthor of over 450 scientific publications and editor of seven books on solar system topics. Rudolf Treumann is retired faculty from the Department of Geophysics and Environmental Sciences, Ludwig Maximilians University Munich. Munich, Germany. He has published widely on plasma physics and astrophysical topics. He is an author of a twövolume textbook on space plasma physics and coeditor of several books on fundamental physics and astrophysics.

Inhalt
Part I.- The Shock Problem.- Equations and Models.- Subcritical Shocks.- Quasi-Perpendicular Supercritical Shocks.- Quasi-Parallel Supercritical Shocks.- Particle Acceleration.- Final Remarks.- Part II.- Introduction.- Planetary Bow Shocks.- The Heliospheric Termination Shock.