  We investigate the formation of collisionless magnetized shocks triggered by
the interaction between magnetized plasma flows and miniature-sized (order of
plasma kinetic-scales) magnetic obstacles resorting to massively parallel, full
particle-in-cell simulations, including the electron kinetics. The critical
obstacle size to generate a compressed plasma region ahead of these objects is
determined by independently varying the magnitude of the dipolar magnetic
moment and the plasma magnetization. We find that the effective size of the
obstacle depends on the relative orientation between the dipolar and plasma
internal magnetic fields, and we show that this may be critical to form a shock
in small-scale structures. We study the microphysics of the magnetopause in
different magnetic field configurations in 2D and compare the results with full
3D simulations. Finally, we evaluate the parameter range where such miniature
magnetized shocks can be explored in laboratory experiments.

Plasma Physics