A collisionless shock wave experiment

Collisionless shock waves are a very important heating mechanism for plasmas and are commonly found in space and astrophysical environments. Collisionless shocks were studied in the laboratory more than 20 years ago, and more recently in space via in situ satellite measurements. The authors propose a new laboratory shock wave experiment to address unresolved issues related to the differences in the partition of plasma heating between electrons and ions in space and laboratory plasmas, which can have important implications for a number of physical systems.