Plasma refilling of the lunar wake: Plasma-vacuum interactions, electrostatic shocks, and electromagnetic instabilities

A plasma void forms downstream of the Moon when the solar wind impacts the lunar surface. This void gradually refills as the solar wind passes by, forming the lunar wake. We investigate this refilling process using a fully kinetic particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation. The early stage of refilling follows plasma-vacuum interaction theory, characterized by exponential decay of plasma density into the wake, along with ion acceleration and cooling in the expansion direction. Our PIC simulation confirms these theoretical predictions. In the next stage of the refilling process, the counter-streaming supersonic ion beams collide, generating Debye-scale electrostatic shocks at the wake's center. These shocks decelerate and thermalize the ion beams while heating electrons into flat-top velocity distributions along magnetic field lines. Additionally, fast magnetosonic waves undergo convective growth via anomalous cyclotron resonance as they co-propagate with temperature-anisotropic ion beams toward ..., , # Data from: Plasma refilling of the lunar wake: Plasma-vacuum interactions, electrostatic shocks, and electromagnetic instabilities

## Overview

This dataset contains particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation results for studying lunar wake refilling processes. After downloading and extracting the dataset, you will find two main directories:

* **`data/`** - Raw simulation data files
* **`scripts/`** - Jupyter notebooks for analysis and visualization

## Data Structure

### Raw Data Files: data.file (data/directory)

The raw data consists of two types:

* **Field data** (`.gda` files): Electromagnetic fields and plasma quantities defined on spatial grids
* **Particle data** (`.bin` files): Ion and electron distributions defined on phase space grids

### Analysis Scripts: scripts.file (scripts/directory)

Each Jupyter notebook reproduces specific figures from our paper and demonstrates complete analysis workflows. The notebooks are self-contained and include all necessary data processing and v...,