Abstract : The expansion of a dense plasma into a dilute plasma across an initially uniform perpendicular magnetic field is followed with a one-dimensional particle-in-cell simulation over magnetohydrodynamics time scales. The dense plasma expands in the form of a fast rarefaction wave. The accelerated dilute plasma becomes separated from the dense plasma by a tangential discontinuity at its back. A fast magnetosonic shock with the Mach number 1.5 forms at its front. Our simulation demonstrates how wave dispersion widens the shock transition layer into a train of nonlinear fast magnetosonic waves.
M. E. Dieckmann, D. Folini, R. Walder, L. Romagnani, E. d'Humieres, et al.. Emergence of MHD structures in a collisionless PIC simulation plasma. Physics of Plasmas, 2017, 24, ⟨10.1063/1.4991702⟩. ⟨insu-03710609⟩