Related papers: Particle acceleration in a reconnecting current sh…
Transient electron dynamics near the interface of counterstreaming plasmas at the onset of a relativistic collisionless shock (RCS) is investigated using particle-in-cell simulations. We identify a slingshot-like injection process induced…
We study the acceleration of electrons and positrons at an electromagnetically modified, ultra-relativistic shock in the context of pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe). We simulate the outflow produced by an obliquely rotating pulsar in proximity of…
Solar wind stream interaction regions (SIRs) are often characterized by energetic ion enhancements. The mechanisms accelerating these particles, as well as the locations where the acceleration occurs, remain debated. Here, we report the…
When supersonic plasma flows collide, many physical processes contribute to the morphology of the resulting shock. One of these processes is the acceleration of non-thermal ions, which will, eventually, reach relativistic speeds and become…
Particle acceleration and pitch-angle anisotropy resulting from magnetic reconnection are investigated in highly magnetized ion-electron plasmas. By means of fully kinetic particle-in-cell simulations, we demonstrate that magnetic…
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…
In this review, we examine particle transport in strongly turbulent three-dimensional (3D) magnetized plasmas, characterized by intense (large-amplitude) magnetic field fluctuations. Such environments naturally give rise to a network of…
We simulate, using a particle-in-cell code, the chain of acceleration processes at work during the Compton-based interaction of a dilute electron-ion plasma with an extreme-intensity, incoherent gamma-ray flux with a photon density several…
Energetic positrons have been observed in the interstellar medium, and high-energy positrons with relativistic energies up to approximately 1 TeV have been detected in Galactic cosmic rays. We conducted a study on the acceleration of…
The aim of this work is to investigate and characterise particle behaviour in an (observationally-driven) 3D MHD model of the solar atmosphere above a slowly evolving, non-flaring active region. We use a relativistic guiding-centre particle…
The electromagnetic emission from neutron star mergers is comprised of multiple components. Synchrotron emission from the disk-powered jet as well as thermal emission from the merger ejecta (powered by a variety of sources) are among the…
The theory of diffusive acceleration of energetic particles at shock fronts assumes charged particles undergo spatial diffusion in a uniform magnetic field. If, however, the magnetic field is not uniform, but has a stochastic or braided…
We investigate shock structure and particle acceleration in relativistic magnetized collisionless electron-ion shocks by means of 2.5D particle-in-cell simulations with ion-to-electron mass ratios (m_i/m_e) ranging from 16 to 1000. We…
Basic principles of particle-in-cell (PIC ) codes with the main application for plasma-based acceleration are discussed. The ab initio full electromagnetic relativistic PIC codes provide the most reliable description of plasmas. Their…
Several MHD works and, in particular, the recent one by Medina-Torrejon et al. (2021) based on three-dimensional MHD simulations of relativistic jets, have evidenced that particle acceleration by magnetic reconnection driven by the…
New particle acceleration schemes open up exciting opportunities, potentially providing more compact or higher-energy accelerators. The AWAKE experiment at CERN is currently taking data to establish the method of proton-driven plasma…
Particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations are widely used as a tool to investigate instabilities that develop between a collisionless plasma and beams of charged particles. However, even on contemporary supercomputers, it is not always possible to…
The statistical properties of ions in two-dimensional fully developed turbulence have been compared between two different numerical algorithms. In particular, we compare Hybrid Particle In Cell (hybrid PIC with fluid electrons) and full PIC…
Magnetic reconnection in the relativistic and trans-relativistic regimes is able to accelerate particles to hard power law energy spectra $f \propto \gamma^{-p}$ (approaching $p=1$). The underlying acceleration mechanism that determines the…
Using molecular dynamics simulations, we study particle-transport in a system of interacting colloidal particles on a ring, where the system is driven by a time-dependent external potential, moving along the ring. We consider two driving…