Related papers: Efficiency limits of diffusive shock acceleration
First order Fermi acceleration at astrophysical shocks is often invoked as a mechanism for the generation of non-thermal particles. This mechanism is especially simple in the approximation that the accelerated particles behave like test…
(abridged) We present results of test-particle simulations on both the first and the second order Fermi acceleration at relativistic parallel shock waves. We consider two scenarios for particle injection: (i) particles injected at the shock…
We examine limits to the energy to which cosmic rays can be accelerated by relativistic shocks, showing that acceleration of light ions as high as 100 EeV is unlikely. The implication of our estimates is that if ultra-high energy cosmic…
The first-order Fermi acceleration process at an ultra-relativistic shock wave is expected to create a particle spectrum with the unique asymptotic spectral index sigma_{gamma >> 1} approximately 2.2. Below, we discuss this result and…
The first-order cosmic ray acceleration at ultrarelativistic shocks is investigated using the Monte Carlo method. We apply a method of discrete particle momentum scattering as a model of particle pitch angle diffusion to reproduce highly…
Electron acceleration to non-thermal energies in low Mach number (M<5) shocks is revealed by radio and X-ray observations of galaxy clusters and solar flares, but the electron acceleration mechanism remains poorly understood. Diffusive…
We present results from a fully relativistic Monte Carlo simulation of diffusive shock acceleration (DSA) in unmodified (i.e., test-particle) shocks. The computer code uses a single algorithmic sequence to smoothly span the range from…
We report on a new Monte Carlo method for simulating diffusive shock acceleration (DSA) of solar energetic particles at upstream and downstream regions of quasi-parallel collisionless shock waves under the influence of self-generated…
Diffusive shock acceleration is invoked to explain non-thermal particle acceleration in Supernova Remnants, Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) Jets, Gamma ray Bursts (GRBs) and various large scale cosmic structures. The importance of achieving…
The linear theory of shock acceleration predicts the maximum particle energy to be limited only by the acceleration time and the size of the shock. We study the combined effect of acceleration nonlinearity (shock modification by accelerated…
Clusters of galaxies are storage rooms of cosmic rays. They confine the hadronic component of cosmic rays over cosmological time scales due to diffusion, and the electron component due to energy losses. Hadronic cosmic rays can be…
A major attraction of diffusive shock acceleration is the prediction of power-law spectra for energetic particle distributions. However, this property is not fundamental to the theory. We demonstrate that for planar shocks with an oblique…
A well-known paradigm about the origin of Galactic cosmic rays (CRs) is that these high-energy particles are accelerated in the process of diffusive shock acceleration (DSA) at collisionless shocks (at least up to the so-called "knee"energy…
Diffusion of cosmic rays (CRs) is the key process of understanding their propagation and acceleration. We employ the description of spatial separation of magnetic field lines in MHD turbulence in Lazarian & Vishniac (1999) to quantify the…
Prescriptions for electron injection into the diffusive shock acceleration process are required in many practical considerations of cosmic-ray astrophysics, particularly in modeling of the synchrotron emission of astrophysical sources. In…
The maximum energy to which cosmic rays can be accelerated at weakly-magnetised ultra-relativistic shocks is investigated. We demonstrate that for such shocks, in which the scattering of energetic particles is mediated exclusively by ion…
We shortly discuss several astrophysical scenarios leading to cosmic ray acceleration up to extremely high energies reaching the scale of 10^{20} eV. The processes suggested in the literature include acceleration at relativistic jet…
While a growing body of research indicates that relativistic magnetic reconnection is a prodigious source of particle acceleration in high-energy astrophysical systems, the dominant acceleration mechanism remains controversial. Using a…
Despite being studied for many years, the structure of collisionless shocks is still not fully determined. Such shocks are known to be accelerators of cosmic rays, which, in turn, modify the shock structure. The shock width $\lambda$ is…
We show that the energy required to turbulently amplify magnetic field during cosmic ray (CR) acceleration by shocks extracts energy from the CR and steepens the CR energy spectrum.