SCATTTERING OF HIGH-ENERGY PARTICLES AT A COLLISIONLESS SHOCK FRONT: DEPENDENCE ON THE SHOCK ANGLE

Many shock acceleration theories deal with gyrophase-averaged particle distributions that depend only on the energy and pitch. angle of the particles. Diffusive shock acceleration includes shock crossing as a necessary component. As long as the shock width is much smaller than the mean free path of a particle, the crossing is governed by the macroscopic fields inside the transition layer. The dynamics of high-energy particles in these fields is non-adiabatic and gyrophase dependent. The magnetic moment is not conserved in a wide range of shock angles, nor is the condition of reflection determined by the magnetic bottle relation. Instead, for a pitch angle and unknown gyrophase of an incident particle there is a finite probability of reflection. This probability varies between zero and unity in a wide range of pitch angles. In this work we investigate how the matching conditions at the shock front could be modified with the gyrophase dependence taken into account, e.g., in the form of the scattering probabilities.