2025/09/15 by V. Valenzuela-Villaseca, Valenzuela-Villaseca, V., Samuel Totorica +15
Physics and Astronomy · Earth and Planetary Sciences · #Ionosphere and magnetosphere dynamics #Magnetic confinement fusion research #Earthquake Detection and Analysis
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2509.12164
We present laboratory results on energy partitioning from supercritical, magnetized collisionless shock experiments (\rmMA ∼ 8, \rmMms∼ 4). We report the first observation of fully-developed laboratory shocks that evolve for more than seven upstream ion gyration periods and have a downstream region that extends more than four shocked ion gyroperiods. Thomson scattering measurements are used to measure electron and ion temperatures, plasma density, and flow speeds. We directly measure a compression ratio of 3.6±0.3, consistent with shock jump conditions. A foot ahead of the shock exhibits super-adiabatic electron and ion heating. The downstream electron temperature has an ≈ 30% excess above adiabatic and collisional electron-ion heating, implying significant collisionless anomalous electron heating. We find a downstream electron-ion temperature ratio Te(d)/Ti(d) = 0.8 ± 0.3, consistent with spacecraft observations but outside the range of predictions from theory and numerical simulations.