Related papers: Collisionless Relativistic Shocks:current driven t…
It has recently been shown that a significant slowdown of many stars can be attributed to the emergence of a strong magnetic field within the radiative region, where heat is transferred through radiation in a stably stratified layer. Here,…
This paper summarizes recent progresses in our theoretical understanding of particle acceleration at relativistic shock waves and it discusses two salient consequences: (1) the maximal energy of accelerated particles; (2) the impact of the…
Collisionless shocks and plasma turbulence are crucial ingredients for a broad range of astrophysical systems. The shock-turbulence interaction, and in particular the transmission of fully developed turbulence across the quasi-perpendicular…
Magnetic reconnection requires the violation of the frozen-in condition which ties gyrating charged particles to the magnetic field inhibiting diffusion. Ongoing reconnection has been identified in near-Earth space as being responsible for…
We investigate an efficient mechanism for generating magnetic fields in turbulent, collisionless plasmas. By using fully kinetic, particle-in-cell simulations of an initially non-magnetized plasma, we inspect the genesis of magnetization,…
We present results from three-dimensional particle simulations of collisionless shocks with relativistic counter-streaming ion-electron plasmas. Particles are followed over many skin depths downstream of the shock. Open boundaries allow the…
The question of the origin of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays at relativistic shock waves is discussed in the light of results of recent Monte Carlo studies of the first-order Fermi particle acceleration (Niemiec & Ostrowski 2006, Niemiec et…
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…
A test mass, $M$, moving through an ambient medium of light particles with lower average kinetic energy than itself suffers a deceleration caused by its scattering of the light particles. The phenomenon is usually referred to as dynamical…
Magnetized turbulence and magnetic reconnection are often invoked to explain the nonthermal emission observed from a wide variety of astrophysical sources. By means of fully-kinetic 2D and 3D PIC simulations, we investigate the interplay…
We examine Fermi-type acceleration at relativistic shocks, and distinguish between the initial boost of the first shock crossing cycle, where the energy gain per particle can be very large, and the Fermi process proper with repeated shock…
In a collisionless, magnetized plasma, particles may stream freely along magnetic-field lines, leading to phase "mixing" of their distribution function and consequently to smoothing out of any "compressive" fluctuations (of density,…
We discuss 3D simulations of relativistic collisionless shocks in electron-positron pair plasmas using the particle-in-cell (PIC) method. The shock structure is mainly controlled by the shock's magnetization ("sigma" parameter). We…
The radiation from afterglows of gamma-ray bursts is generated in the collisionless plasma shock interface between a relativistic outflow and a quiescent circum-burst medium. The two main ingredients responsible for the radiation are…
The physics of particle acceleration in turbulent plasmas is a topic of broad interest, which is making rapid progress thanks to dedicated, large-scale numerical experiments. The first part of this paper presents an effective theory of…
The phenomenon of Fermi acceleration is addressed for a dissipative bouncing ball model with external stochastic perturbation. It is shown that the introduction of energy dissipation (inelastic collisions of the particle with the moving…
lasma instabilities excited in collisionless shocks are responsible for particle acceleration. We have investigated the particle acceleration and shock structure associated with an unmagnetized relativistic electron-positron jet propagating…
We review the physics of relativistic shocks, which are often invoked as the sources of non-thermal particles in pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe), gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), and active galactic nuclei (AGN) jets, and as possible sources of…
The acceleration of charged particles at astrophysical collisionless shock waves is one of the best studied processes for the energization of particles to ultrarelativistic energies, required by multifrequency observations in a variety of…
Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are mysterious radio transients whose physical origin is still unknown. Within a few astronomical units near an FRB source, the electric field of the electromagnetic wave is so large that the electron oscillation…