The determination of shock ramp width using the noncoplanar magnetic field component

We determine a simple expression for the ramp width of a collisionless fast shock, based upon the relationship between the noncoplanar and main magnetic field components. By comparing this predicted width with that measured during an observation of a shock, the shock velocity can be determined from a single spacecraft. For a range of low-Mach, low-beta bow shock observations made by the ISEE-1 and -2 spacecraft, ramp widths determined from two-spacecraft comparison and from this noncoplanar component relationship agree within 30%. When two-spacecraft measurements are not available or are inefficient, this technique provides a reasonable estimation of scale size for low-Mach shocks.Comment: 6 pages, LaTeX (aguplus + agutex); packages:amsmath,times,graphicx,float, psfrag,verbatim; 3 postscript figures called by the file; submitted to Geophys. Res. Let

Coherent Emission from Magnetars

It is proposed that magnetospheric currents above the surfaces of magnetars radiate coherent emission in analogy to pulsars. Scaling the magnetospheric parameters suggests that the coherent emission from magnetars would emerge in the infra-red or optical

Pick-up ion dynamics at the structured quasi-perpendicular shock

We study the pickup ion dynamics and mechanism of multiple reflection and acceleration at the structured quasi-perpendicular supercritical shock. The motion of the pickup ions in the shock is studied analytically and numerically using the test particle analysis in the model shock front. The analysis shows that slow pickup ions may be accelerated at the shock ramp to high energies. The maximum ion energy is determined by the fine structure of the electro-magnetic field at the shock ramp and decreases when the angle between magnetic field and shock normal decreases. Evolution of pickup ion distribution across the nearly-perpendicular shock and pickup ion spectrum is also studied by direct numerical analysis.Comment: LaTeX (elsart.cls), packages: times,amsmath,amssymb; 15 pages + 13 figures (GIF). To appear in Planetary and Space Science

On convergence of the ChPT HFF expansion for one loop contribution to meson production in NN collisions

We consider the application of heavy fermion formalism based chiral perturbation theory to meson production in nucleon-nucleon collisions. It is shown that for one loop contributions the heavy fermion formalism expansion corrections for the nucleon propagator produce infinite series of correction terms which are of the same momentum power order. This destroys the one-to-one correspondence between the perturbative and small momentum expansion and thus negates the application of any finite order heavy fermion formalism chiral perturbation theory to the $NN\to NN \pi$ reactions.Comment: 13 pages, 3figure