CMSE faculty Michael Murillo's paper was published by the American Physical Society's Physical Review Letters.

Article:

"Thermodynamic and Kinetic Properties of Shocks in Two-Dimensional Yukawa Systems"
M. S. Murillo, M. Marciante 

Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 025001 – Published 10 January 2017
Link: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.025001

Abstract 

Particle-level simulations of shocked plasmas are carried out to examine kinetic properties not captured by hydrodynamic models. In particular, molecular dynamics simulations of 2D Yukawa plasmas with variable couplings and screening lengths are used to examine shock features unique to plasmas, including the presence of dispersive shock structures for weak shocks. A phase-space analysis reveals several kinetic properties, including anisotropic velocity distributions, non-Maxwellian tails, and the presence of fast particles ahead of the shock, even for moderately low Mach numbers. We also examine the thermodynamics (Rankine-Hugoniot relations) of recent experiments [Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 015002 (2013)] and find no anomalies in their equations of state.