Temperature-reducing shocks in optically thin radiative MHD - Analytical and numerical results

Abstract

Shocks are often invoked as heating mechanisms in astrophysical systems, with both adiabatic compression and dissipative heating that leading to the increase in temperature. While shocks are reasonably well understood for ideal magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) systems, in many astrophysical plasmas, radiation is an important phenomena, which can allow energy to leave the system. As such, energy becomes non-conservative, which can fundamentally change the behavior of shocks. The energy emitted through optically thin radiation post-shock can exceed the thermal energy increase, resulting in shocks that reduce the temperature of the medium, i.e., cooling shocks that have a net decrease in temperature across the interface. In this paper, semi-analytical solutions for radiative shocks are derived to demonstrate that both cooling (temperature decreasing) and heating (temperature increasing) shock solutions are possible across the whole temperature range in optically thin radiative MHD. Numerical simulations of magnetic reconnection for solar-like temperatures and plasma-β with optically thin radiative losses also yield both heating and cooling shocks in roughly equal abundances. The detected cooling shocks feature a significantly lower pressure jump across the shock than their heating counterparts. The compression at the shock front leads to locally enhanced radiative losses, resulting in significant cooling within a few grid cells in the upstream and downstream directions. The presence of temperature-reducing (cooling) shocks is critical in determining the thermal evolution, and heating or cooling, across a wealth of radiative astrophysical plasmas including magnetic reconnection in the solar corona.