Related papers: Recent Advances in Understanding Particle Accelera…
This review discusses the physics of magnetic reconnection, a process in which the magnetic field topology changes and magnetic energy is converted to kinetic energy, in pair plasmas in the relativistic regime. We focus on recent progress…
The elongated bright structures above solar flare loops are suggested to be current sheets, where magnetic reconnection takes place. Observations have revealed various characteristics of the current sheet; however, their physical origin…
Magnetic field-line reconnection is a universal plasma process responsible for the conversion of magnetic field energy to the plasma heating and charged particle acceleration. Solar flares and Earth's magnetospheric substorms are two most…
Recent years have seen spectacular progress in the development of innovative acceleration methods that are not based on traditional RF accelerating structures. These novel developments are at the interface of laser, plasma and accelerator…
Context. It has been suggested that collapsing magnetic traps may contribute to accelerating particles to high energies during solar flares. Aims. We present a detailed investigation of the energization processes of particles in collapsing…
Relativistic current sheets have been proposed as the sites of dissipation in pulsar winds, jets in active galaxies and other Poynting-flux dominated flows. It is shown that the steady versions of these structures differ from their…
Solar flares - the most powerful explosions in the solar system - are also efficient particle accelerators, capable of energizing a large number of charged particles to relativistic speeds. A termination shock is often invoked in the…
High-energy solar flares have shown to have at least two distinct phases: prompt-impulsive and delayed-gradual. Identifying the mechanism responsible for accelerating the electrons and ions and the site at which it occurs during these two…
Pulsar Wind Nebulae, Blazars, Gamma Ray Bursts and Magnetars all contain regions where the electromagnetic energy density greatly exceeds the plasma energy density. These sources exhibit dramatic flaring activity where the electromagnetic…
The past decade has seen an outstanding development of nonthermal particle acceleration in magnetic reconnection in magnetically-dominated systems, with clear signatures of power-law energy distributions as a common outcome of…
Particle acceleration consequences from fluctuating electric fields superposed on an X-type magnetic field in collisionless solar plasma are studied. Such a system is chosen to mimic generic features of dynamic reconnection, or the…
Relativistic sources, e.g. gamma-ray bursts, pulsar wind nebulae and powerful active galactic nuclei produce relativistic outflows that lead to the formation of collisionless shock waves, where particle acceleration is thought to take…
In three-dimensional electromagnetic configurations that result from unstable resistive tearing modes particles can efficiently be accelerated to relativistic energies. To prove this resistive magnetohydrodynamic simulations are used as…
Stochastic acceleration of electrons and protons by waves propagating parallel to the large scale magnetic fields of magnetized plasmas is studied with emphasis on the feasibility of accelerating particles from a thermal background to…
We present some recent developments in the theory of particle acceleration at shock fronts in the presence of dynamical reaction of the accelerated particles and self-generation of magnetic field due to streaming instability. The spectra of…
Fast Magnetic Reconnection is currently regarded as an important process also beyond the solar system, specially in magnetically dominated regions of galactic and extragalactic sources like the surrounds of black holes and relativistic…
Solar flares are efficient particle accelerators with a large fraction of released magnetic energy (10-50%) converted into energetic particles such as hard X-ray producing electrons. This energy transfer process is not well constrained,…
We propose a new two-stage model for acceleration of electrons in solar flares. In the first stage, electrons are accelerated stochastically in a post-reconnection turbulent downflow. The second stage is the reprocessing of a subset of…
Impulsive solar energetic particle events are widely believed to be due to the prompt escape into the interplanetary medium of flare-accelerated particles produced by solar eruptive events. According to the standard model for such events,…
Charged particles are constantly accelerated to non-thermal energies by the reconnecting magnetic field in the solar atmosphere. Our understanding of the interactions between the particles and their environment can benefit from…