Related papers: Particle acceleration mechanisms
The total luminosity and spectral shape of the non-thermal emission produced by cosmic rays depends on their interstellar environment, a dependence that gives rise to correlations between galaxies' bulk properties -- star formation rate,…
Recent observations from {\em RHESSI} have revealed that the number of non-thermal electrons in the coronal part of a flaring loop can exceed the number of electrons required to explain the hard X-ray-emitting footpoints of the same flaring…
Shock acceleration is an ubiquitous phenomenon in astrophysical plasmas. Plasma waves and their associated instabilities (e.g., the Buneman instability, two-streaming instability, and the Weibel instability) created in the shocks are…
The discovery of non-thermal X-ray emission from the jets of some X-ray binaries, and especially the discovery of GeV-TeV gamma-rays in some of them, provide a clear evidence of very efficient acceleration of particles to multi-TeV energies…
Cluster mergers drive shocks into the intracluster medium which heat and compress the thermal gas. X-ray observations of shocks can be used to determine the geometry and kinematics of the merger. Merger shocks should also accelerate…
The number of diffuse radio halos in clusters of galaxies has grown in recent years, making it possible to derive statistical properties of these sources and of the hosting clusters. We show that diffuse sources are associated with X-ray…
The origin of the nonthermal EUV and hard X-ray emission "excess" reported from some galaxy clusters has been intensively debated over last several years. The most favored models which refer this excess to relativistic electrons…
Galactic black hole coronae are composed of a hot, magnetized plasma. The spectral energy distribution produced in this component of X-ray binaries can be strongly affected by different interactions between locally injected relativistic…
We propose a nonlinear self-consistent model of the turbulent non-resonant particle acceleration in solar flares. We simulate temporal evolution of the spectra of charged particles accelerated by strong long-wavelength MHD turbulence taking…
The acceleration and transport of energetic electrons during solar flares is one of the outstanding topics in solar physics. Recent X-ray and radio imaging and spectroscopy observations have provided diagnostics of the distribution of…
What are the mechanisms of particle acceleration and radiation, as well as magnetic field build up and decay in relativistic shocks are open questions with important implications to various phenomena in high energy astrophysics. While the…
A leading mechanism for producing cosmological gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) is via ultra-relativistic particles in an expanding fireball. The kinetic energy of the particles is converted into thermal energy in a forward shock and a reverse…
FERMI (formely GLAST) will shortly provide crucial information on relativistic particles in galaxy clusters. We discuss non-thermal emission in the context of general calculations in which relativistic particles (protons and secondary…
We investigated the non-thermal hard X-ray emission in the Ophiuchus cluster of galaxies. Our aim was to characterise the physical properties of the non-thermal component and its interaction with the cosmic microwave background. We…
Shock acceleration is an ubiquitous phenomenon in astrophysical plasmas. Plasma waves and their associated instabilities (e.g.,Buneman, Weibel and other two-stream instabilities) created in collisionless shocks are responsible for particle…
Cosmic-ray production in young supernova remnant (SNR) shocks is expected to be efficient and strongly nonlinear. In nonlinear, diffusive shock acceleration, compression ratios will be higher and the shocked temperature lower than…
Relativistic electron-positron winds with strong magnetic fields are considered as a source of radiation for cosmological $\gamma$-ray bursters. Such a wind is generated by a millisecond pulsar with a very strong magnetic field. An…
Numerical models of collisionless shocks robustly predict an electron distribution comprised of both thermal and non-thermal electrons. Here, we explore in detail the effect of thermal electrons on the emergent synchrotron emission from…
We investigate how the presence of a non-thermal tail beyond a Maxwellian electron distribution affects the synchrotron process as well as Comptonization in plasmas with parameters typical for accretion flows onto black holes. We find that…
We make the first observation-based calculation of the energy that goes into cosmic-ray protons versus cosmic ray electrons in shock acceleration during structure formation. We find a ratio of energy in cosmic ray protons to energy in…