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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 March 2018
Shock-waves represent one of the most important mechanisms for creating and heating a plasma. In classical non-dissipative gas dynamics, the formation of a shock is indicated by the progressive steepening of a finite-amplitude compressive wave front to the point where it becomes multivalued and consequently without physical meaning. This difficulty is avoided by the inclusion of dissipative effects, usually in the form of heat flow and viscosity. The dissipative mechanisms become more effective as the wave front steepens, and the result is a steady wave profile for which the non-linear and dissipative effects are counterbalanced. The scale length for the dissipative transition zone or wave profile is the mean-free-path; the actual thickness may range from one to several mean-free-paths, or even more for very weak shocks. Given the strength of the shock, the state on one side of the shock may be computed from the state on the other side directly from the laws of conservation of mass, momentum and energy (Hugoniot relations). Accordingly, the nature of the particular dissipative mechanism affects only the shape of the shock profile but not the end states.