Related papers: Particle acceleration in relativistic collisionles…
Shear flows, ubiquitous in space and astrophysical plasmas, can accelerate particles through turbulence excited by the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability. We present the first numerical study of particle acceleration in non-relativistic,…
In this work, we investigate collisionless shocks propagating in a relativistically hot unmagnetized electron-positron plasmas. We estimate the dissipation fraction at shocks in the relativistically hot plasma, showing that it is…
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…
Cosmic rays are charged particles that are accelerated to relativistic speeds by astrophysical shocks. Numerical models have been successful in confirming the acceleration process for (quasi-)parallel shocks, which have the magnetic field…
Fermi acceleration can develop efficiently at relativistic collisionless shock waves provided the upstream (unshocked) plasma is weakly magnetized. At low magnetization, the large size of the shock precursor indeed provides enough time for…
We investigate the acceleration of light particles in perpendicular shocks for plasmas consisting of a mixture of leptonic and hadronic particles. Starting from the full set of conservation equations for the mixed plasma constituents, we…
An extreme case of electron shock drift acceleration in low Mach number collisionless shocks is investigated as a plausible mechanism of initial acceleration of relativistic electrons in large-scale shocks in galaxy clusters where upstream…
The physics of particle acceleration in turbulent plasmas is a topic of broad interest, which is making rapid progress thanks to dedicated, large-scale numerical experiments. The first part of this paper presents an effective theory of…
First-order Fermi acceleration processes at ultrarelativistic shocks are studied with Monte Carlo simulations. The accelerated particle spectra are derived by integrating the exact particle trajectories in a turbulent magnetic field near…
The process of cosmic ray first-order Fermi acceleration at relativistic shock waves is studied with the method of Monte Carlo simulations. The simulations are based on numerical integration of particle equations of motion in a turbulent…
It is shown that Fermi acceleration at an ultra-relativistic shock wave cannot operate on a particle for more than 1 1/2 Fermi cycle (i.e., u -> d -> u -> d) if the particle Larmor radius is much smaller than the coherence length of the…
This paper presents numerical simulations of test particle Fermi acceleration at relativistic shocks of Lorentz factor Gamma_sh = 2-60, using a realistic downstream magnetic structure obtained from the shock jump conditions. The upstream…
The afterglow emission from gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) is usually interpreted as synchrotron radiation from electrons accelerated at the GRB external shock, that propagates with relativistic velocities into the magnetized interstellar medium.…
Relativistic shocks provide an efficient method for high-energy particle acceleration in many astrophysical sources. Multiple shock systems are even more effective and of importance, for example, in the internal shock model of gamma-ray…
We discuss 3D simulations of relativistic collisionless shocks in electron-positron pair plasmas using the particle-in-cell (PIC) method. The shock structure is mainly controlled by the shock's magnetization ("sigma" parameter). We…
(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…
A property common to several different astrophysical sources of high-energy gamma-rays is the presence of bulk motion at relativistic speed. The intrinsic spectra of the nonthermal radiating particles also show interesting similarities,…
This paper presents a new method of Monte-Carlo simulations of test particle Fermi acceleration at relativistic shocks. The particle trajectories in tangled magnetic fields are integrated out exactly from entry to exit through the shock,…
I review the current status of Fermi acceleration theory at relativistic shocks. I first discuss the relativistic shock jump conditions, then describe the non-relativistic Fermi mechanism and the differences introduced by relativistic…
The mechanism of diffusive Fermi acceleration at collisionless plasma shock waves is widely invoked in astrophysics to explain the appearance of non-thermal particle populations in a variety of environments, including sites of cosmic ray…