Related papers: Particle acceleration in the driven relativistic r…
Fast reconnection in magnetically dominated plasmas is widely invoked in models of dissipation in pulsar winds, gamma-ray flares in the Crab nebula, and to explain the radio nanoshots of pulsars. When current sheets evolve reaching a…
Relativistic collisionless shocks are associated with efficient particle acceleration when propagating into weakly magnetized homogeneous media; as the magnetization increases, particle acceleration becomes suppressed. We demonstrate that…
The plasma in low-luminosity accretion flows, such as the one around the black hole at the center of M87 or Sgr A* at our Galactic Center, is expected to be collisioness and two-temperature, with protons hotter than electrons. Here,…
Particle acceleration and heating at mildly relativistic magnetized shocks in electron-ion plasma are investigated with unprecedentedly high-resolution two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations that include ion-scale shock rippling.…
We study the radiation damping effect on the relativistic acceleration of electron-positron plasmas with two-and-half-dimensional particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation. Particles are accelerated by Poynting flux via the diamagnetic relativistic…
Hybrid-Vlasov-Maxwell simulations of magnetized plasma turbulence including non-linear electron-inertia effects in a generalized Ohm's law are presented. When fluctuation energy is injected on scales sufficiently close to ion-kinetic…
We examine the effect of weak, small scale magnetic field structure on the rate of reconnection in a strongly magnetized plasma. This affects the rate of reconnection by reducing the transverse scale for reconnection flows, and by allowing…
Relativistic magnetically dominated turbulence is an efficient engine for particle acceleration in a collisionless plasma. Ultrarelativistic particles accelerated by interactions with turbulent fluctuations form non-thermal power-law…
We present evidence that relativistic shocks propagating in unmagnetized plasmas can self-consistently accelerate particles. We use long-term two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations to study the well-developed shock structure in…
The outflows from gamma ray bursts, active galactic nuclei and relativistic jets in general interact with the surrounding media through collisionless shocks. With three dimensional relativistic particle-in-cell simulations we investigate…
Using analytical and numerical methods (fluid and particle-in-cell simulations) we study a number of model problems involving merger of magnetic flux tubes in relativistic magnetically-dominated plasma. Mergers of current-carrying flux…
The gamma-ray space telescopes AGILE and Fermi detected short and bright synchrotron gamma-ray flares at photon energies above 100 MeV in the Crab Nebula. This discovery suggests that electron-positron pairs in the nebula are accelerated to…
We present the first three-dimensional fully kinetic electromagnetic relativistic particle-in-cell simulations of the collision of two interpenetrating plasma shells. The highly accurate plasma-kinetic "particle-in-cell" (with the total of…
Fast reconnection operating in magnetically dominated plasmas is often invoked in models for magnetar giant flares, for magnetic dissipation in pulsar winds, or to explain the gamma-ray flares observed in the Crab nebula, hence its…
Particle acceleration during magnetic reconnection is a long-standing topic in space, solar and astrophysical plasmas. Recent 3D particle-in-cell simulations of magnetic reconnection show that particles can leave flux ropes due to 3D…
We investigate shock structure and particle acceleration in relativistic magnetized collisionless pair shocks by means of 2.5D and 3D particle-in-cell simulations. We explore a range of inclination angles between the pre-shock magnetic…
Context. Converging flows with strong magnetic fields of different polarity can accelerate particles through magnetic reconnection. If the particle mean free path is longer than the reconnection layer is thick, but much shorter than the…
We propose a new particle acceleration mechanism. Electron can be accelerated to relativistic energy within a few electromagnetic wave cycles through the mechanism which is named electromagnetic and magnetic field resonance acceleration…
Reconnection of the magnetic lines of force is considered in case the magnetic energy exceeds the rest energy of the matter. It is shown that the classical Sweet-Parker and Petschek models are generalized straightforwardly to this case and…
Using fully kinetic simulations, we study the scaling of the inflow speed of collisionless magnetic reconnection from the non-relativistic to ultra-relativistic limit. In the anti-parallel configuration, the inflow speed increases with the…