Related papers: Particle Acceleration in Turbulence and Weakly Sto…
Reconnection and turbulence are two of the most commonly observed dynamical processes in plasmas, but their relationship is still not fully understood. Using 2.5D kinetic particle-in-cell simulations of both strong turbulence and…
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…
Magnetic reconnection is a process that changes magnetic field topology in highly conducting fluids. Traditionally, magnetic reconnection was associated mostly with solar flares. In reality, the process must be ubiquitous as astrophysical…
A new computational model is presented suitable for exploring the self-consistent production of energetic electrons during magnetic reconnection in macroscale systems. The equations are based on the recent discovery that parallel electric…
The Fermi acceleration model was introduced to describe how cosmic ray particles are accelerated to great speeds by interacting with moving magnetic fields. We identify a new variation of the model where light ions interact with a moving…
Astrophysical fluids are generally turbulent and this preexisting turbulence must be taken into account for the models of magnetic reconnection which are attepmted to be applied to astrophysical, solar or heliospheric environments. In…
Magnetic reconnection drives multi-species particle acceleration broadly in space and astrophysics. We perform the first 3D hybrid simulations (fluid electrons, kinetic ions) that contain sufficient scale separation to produce nonthermal…
A rotating pulsar creates a surrounding pulsar wind nebula (PWN) by steadily releasing an energetic wind into the interior of the expanding shockwave of supernova remnant or interstellar medium. At the termination shock of a PWN, the…
The important characteristic of turbulent reconnection is that it combines large scale magnetic disturbances $(\delta B/B \sim 1)$ with randomly distributed Unstable Current Sheets (UCSs). Many well known non linear MHD structures (strong…
In situ particle acceleration is probably occuring in cluster radio haloes. This is suggested by the uniformity and extent of the haloes, given that spatial diffusion is slow and that radiative losses limit particle lifetimes. Stochastic…
Magnetic field embedded in a perfectly conducting fluid preserves its topology for all time. Although ionized astrophysical objects, like stars and galactic disks, are almost perfectly conducting, they show indications of changes in…
One of the key questions in the study of relativistic jets is how magnetic reconnection occurs and whether it can effectively accelerate electrons in the jet. We performed 3D particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations of a relativistic…
In highly conducting astrophysical plasmas, charged particles are generically accelerated through Fermi-type processes involving repeated interactions with moving magnetized scattering centers. The present paper proposes a generalized…
Relativistic magnetic turbulence has been proposed as a process for producing nonthermal particles in high-energy astrophysics. Particle energization may be contributed by both magnetic reconnection and turbulent fluctuations, but their…
Plasma energization through magnetic reconnection in the magnetically-dominated regime featured by low plasma beta ($\beta = 8 \pi nkT_0/B^2 \ll 1$) and/or high magnetization ($\sigma = B^2/(4 \pi nmc^2) \gg 1$) is important in a series of…
Plasmoid instability is usually accounted for the onset of fast reconnection events observed in astrophysical plasmas. However, the measured reconnection rate from observations can be one order of magnitude higher than that derived from MHD…
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…
It is well known that magnetic fields constrain motions of charged particles, impeding the diffusion of charged particles perpendicular to magnetic field direction. This modification of transport processes is of vital importance for a wide…
Context: The strong electric fields associated with magnetic reconnection in solar flares are a plausible mechanism to accelerate populations of high energy, non-thermal particles. One such reconnection scenario occurs at a 3D magnetic null…
We investigate electron acceleration resulting from 3D magnetic reconnection between an emerging, twisted magnetic flux rope and a pre-existing weak, open magnetic field. We first follow the rise of an unstable, twisted flux tube with a…