English

Diffusive cosmic ray acceleration at relativistic shock waves with magnetostatic turbulence

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2015-08-19 v1

Abstract

The analytical theory of diffusive cosmic ray acceleration at parallel stationary shock waves with magnetostatic turbulence is generalized to arbitrary shock speeds Vs=β1cV_s=\beta_1c, including in particular relativistic speeds. This is achieved by applying the diffusion approximation to the relevant Fokker-Planck particle transport equation formulated in the mixed comoving coordinate system. In this coordinate system the particle's momentum coordinates pp and μ=p/p\mu =p_{\parallel }/p are taken in the rest frame of the streaming plasma, whereas the time and space coordinates are taken in the observer's system. For magnetostatic slab turbulence the diffusion-convection transport equation for the isotropic (in the rest frame of the streaming plasma) part of the particle's phase space density is derived. For a step-wise shock velocity profile the steady-state diffusion-convection transport equation is solved. For a symmetric pitch-angle scattering Fokker-Planck coefficient Dμμ(μ)=Dμμ(μ)D_{\mu \mu }(-\mu )=D_{\mu \mu }(\mu ) the steady-state solution is independent of the microphysical scattering details. For nonrelativistic mono-momentum particle injection at the shock the differential number density of accelerated particles is a Lorentzian-type distribution function which at large momenta approaches a power law distribution function N(ppc)pξN(p\ge p_c)\propto p^{-\xi } with the spectral index ξ(β1)=1+[3/(Γ1r2β121)(1+3β12)]\xi (\beta_1) =1+[3/(\Gamma_1\sqrt{r^2-\beta_1^2}-1)(1+3\beta_1^2)]. For nonrelativistic (β11\beta_1\ll 1) shock speeds this spectral index agrees with the known result ξ(β11)(r+2)/(r1)\xi (\beta_1\ll 1)\simeq (r+2)/(r-1), whereas for ultrarelativistic (Γ11\Gamma_1\gg 1) shock speeds the spectral index value is close to unity.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1503.04737,
  title  = {Diffusive cosmic ray acceleration at relativistic shock waves with magnetostatic turbulence},
  author = {Reinhard Schlickeiser},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1503.04737},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

11 pages, 2 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-22T08:54:19.090Z