Collisionless Plasma Shock

Abstract

The structure of an extremely strong magnetohydrodynamic shock is discussed in the limit of no particle collisions. It is tentatively concluded that the shock transition takes place through the mechanism of a strong electric field produced by charge separation. The pressure in the shocked plasma is due primarily to a very high electron temperature. The entropy increase occurs by Landau damping of the coherent electron oscillation. The ions, on the other hand, undergo an irreversible temperature change of only 3.