Speaker
Mahmoud Alawashra
(DESY)
Description
Relativistic collisionless shocks accelerate particles through collective wave-particle interactions. In pair plasmas, turbulence is self-generated via the Weibel instability, but its structure and efficiency depend sensitively on plasma composition and magnetization. We perform large-scale Particle-in-Cell (PIC) simulations to study relativistic pair shocks with a sub-percent ion admixture, a regime that has not been explored before and is directly relevant for pair-enriched astrophysical environments such as GRB afterglows. Even a small fraction of ions can introduce new wave–particle interaction channels, potentially modifying magnetic turbulence, shock structure, and the efficiency of non-thermal particle acceleration.
Author
Mahmoud Alawashra
(DESY)