  The expansion of a thermal pressure-driven radial blast shell into a dilute
ambient plasma is examined with two-dimensional PIC simulations. The purpose is
to determine if laminar shocks form in a collisionless plasma that resemble
their magnetohydrodynamic counterparts. The ambient plasma is composed of
electrons with the temperature 2 keV and cool fully ionized nitrogen ions. It
is permeated by a spatially uniform magnetic field. A forward shock forms
between the shocked ambient medium and the pristine ambient medium, which
changes from an ion acoustic one through a slow magnetosonic one to a fast
magnetosonic shock with increasing shock propagation angles relative to the
magnetic field. The slow magnetosonic shock that propagates obliquely to the
magnetic field changes into a tangential discontinuity for a perpendicular
propagation direction, which is in line with the magnetohydrodynamic model. The
expulsion of the magnetic field by the expanding blast shell triggers an
electron-cyclotron drift instability.
