Resonant Ion Acceleration by Collisionless Magnetosonic Shock Wave Propagating Obliquely to a Magnetic Field

A 2–1/2 dimensional relativistic electromagnetic particle code is used to study a time evolution of a selfconsistent nonlinear magnetosonic pulse propagating obliquely to a magnetic field. It is shown that the shock wave traps some ions and resonantly accelerates them parallel to the wave front. This acceleration is most efficient when the propagation angle is in the region \(θc{}θ{}π/2\), where θ c = arctan (( m i / m e ) 1/2 -( m e / m i ) 1/2 ).