Related papers: Interaction of a highly magnetized impulsive relat…
The efficiency of particle acceleration at shock waves in relativistic, magnetized astrophysical outflows is a debated topic with far-reaching implications. Here, for the first time, we study the impact of turbulence in the pre-shock…
In the internal shock scenario for GRBs we expect some fraction of the energy of the burst to be carried by slow moving shells that were ejected at late times. These slow shells collide with faster moving outer shells when the outer shells…
Afterglows of gamma-ray bursts are believed to require magnetic fields much stronger than that of the compressed pre-shock medium. As an alternative to microscopic plasma instabilities, we propose amplification of the field by macroscopic…
Gamma-ray burst (GRB) afterglow emission is believed to be produced by synchrotron emission of electrons accelerated to high energy by a relativistic collisionless shock propagating into a weakly magnetized plasma. Afterglow observations…
The early optical afterglow emission of several gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) shows a high linear polarization degree (PD) of tens of percent, suggesting an ordered magnetic field in the emission region. The light curves are consistent with being…
The sudden reconnection of a non-force free 2D current layer, embedded in a low-beta plasma, triggered by the onset of an anomalous resistivity, is studied in detail. The resulting behaviour consists of two main phases. Firstly, a transient…
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are promising as sources of neutrinos and cosmic rays. In the internal shock scenario, blobs of plasma emitted from a central engine collide within a relativistic jet and form shocks, leading to particle acceleration…
Models for GRB outflows invoke turbulence in relativistically hot magnetized fluids. In order to investigate these conditions we have performed high-resolution three-dimensional numerical simulations of relativistic magneto-hydrodynamical…
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the most electromagnetically luminous cosmic explosions. They are powered by collimated streams of plasma (jets) ejected by a newborn stellar-mass black hole or neutron star at relativistic velocities (near the…
There is growing evidence that some long gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) arise from the core collapse of massive stars, and thus it is inevitable that the environments of these GRBs are preburst stellar winds or dense media. We studied, for the…
Forward shocks caused by the interaction between a relativistic blast wave and the circum-burst medium are thought to be responsible for the afterglow emission in Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs). We consider the hydrodynamics of a spherical…
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) show a dramatic pulse structure that requires bulk relativistic motion, but whose physical origin has remained murky. We focus on a hot, magnetized jet that is emitted by a black hole and interacts with a confining…
We consider a model in which the ultra-relativistic jet in a gamma-ray burst (GRB) is cold and magnetically accelerated. We assume that the energy flux in the outflowing material is partially thermalized via internal shocks or a reverse…
The generation of turbulence at magnetized shocks and its subsequent interaction with the latter is a key question of plasma- and high-energy astrophysics. This paper presents two-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic simulations of a fast shock…
The plasma dynamics resulting from the simultaneous impact, of two equal, ultra-intense laser pulses, in two spatially separated spots, onto a dense target is studied via particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations. The simulations show that…
Magnetic fields play a dual role in gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). First, GRB and afterglow spectra (the latter interpreted as emission from external shocks) imply synchrotron radiation in a magnetic field that is a significant fraction of…
Due to its ubiquitous presence, turbulence is often invoked to explain the origin of nonthermal particles in astrophysical sources of high-energy emission. With particle-in-cell simulations, we study decaying turbulence in…
Astrophysical plasmas can have parameters vastly different from the more studied laboratory and space plasmas. In particular, the magnetic fields can be the dominant component of the plasma, with energy-density exceeding the particle…
We investigate the interaction of nonthermal ions (protons and nuclei) accelerated in an ultrarelativistic blastwave with the pre-existing magnetic field of the medium into which the blastwave propagates. While particle acceleration…
Binary neutron-star mergers have long been associated with short-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). This connection was confirmed with the first coincident detection of gravitational waves together with electromagnetic radiation from…