Related papers: Explosive X-point collapse in relativistic magneti…
The kinetic features of plasmoid chain formation and evolution are investigated by two dimensional Particle-in-Cell simulations. Magnetic reconnection is initiated in multiple X points by the tearing instability. Plasmoids form and grow in…
In this paper, we derive the upper bounds on the coupling of axion-like particles (ALPs) with photon as a function of the mass by considering axion-photon conversion in the Crab Nebula. Previous studies have not considered the influence of…
Magnetic reconnection is a fundamental plasma process that converts magnetic energy into bulk flow energy, thermal energy, and nonthermal particle acceleration. Despite its importance, the statistical properties of the turbulent…
A model of an accelerated expansion of the Crab Nebula powered by the spinning-down Crab pulsar is proposed, in which time dependence of the acceleration is connected with evolution of pulsar luminosity. Using recent observational data, we…
Recently the AGILE and Fermi/LAT detectors uncovered giant $\gamma$-ray flares from the Crab nebula. The duration of these flares is a few days. The Fermi/LAT data with monthly time binning further showed significant variability of the…
Many powerful and variable gamma-ray sources, including pulsar wind nebulae, active galactic nuclei and gamma-ray bursts, seem capable of accelerating particles to gamma-ray emitting energies efficiently over very short time scales. These…
Magnetic reconnection is a fundamental plasma process involving an exchange of magnetic energy to plasma kinetic energy through changes in the magnetic field topology. In many astrophysical plasmas magnetic reconnection plays a key role in…
We present a detailed analysis of the morphological properties of the Crab Nebula across the electromagnetic spectrum based on new and previous high-quality data from radio to X-rays. In the radio range we obtained an image of the entire…
In solar flares and other astrophysical systems, a major challenge for solving particle acceleration problem associated with magnetic reconnection is the enormous scale separation between kinetic scales and observed reconnection scale.…
While supernova remnants (SNRs) have long been considered prime candidates for the source of cosmic rays, at least to energies up to ~10^14 eV, it is only over the past several years that direct evidence of such energetic particles in SNRs…
Recent experiments have observed magnetic reconnection in high-energy-density, laser-produced plasma bubbles, with reconnection rates observed to be much higher than can be explained by classical theory. Based on fully kinetic particle…
Magnetic reconnection is a well-accepted part of the theory of solar eruptive events, though the evidence is still circumstantial. Intrinsic to the reconnection picture of a solar eruptive event, particularly in the standard model for…
The relativistic wind of obliquely-rotating pulsars consists of toroidal stripes of opposite magnetic field polarity, separated by current sheets of hot plasma. By means of two- and three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations, we…
Evolving magnetic fields are frequently embedded in plasmas that are turbulent. When the primary interest is in effects that are on a large scale compared to that of the turbulence, it is desirable to average over the turbulence to obtain…
Strong magnetic fields, synchrotron emission, and Compton scattering are omnipresent in compact celestial X-ray sources. Emissions in the X-ray energy band are consequently expected to be linearly polarized. X-ray polarimetry provides a…
Magnetic reconnection is invoked as one of the primary mechanisms to produce energetic particles. We employ large-scale three-dimensional (3D) particle-in-cell simulations of reconnection in magnetically-dominated ($\sigma=10$) pair plasmas…
In the last decade, the relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) modelling of pulsar wind nebulae, and of the Crab nebula in particular, has been highly successful, with many of the observed dynamical and emission properties reproduced down…
We study the nonlinear evolution of the resistive tearing mode in slab geometry in two dimensions. We show that, in the strongly driven regime (large Delta'), a collapse of the X-point occurs once the island width exceeds a certain critical…
I. There is growing evidence that pulsars' high energy emission is generated via Inverse Compton mechanism. II. The particles producing Crab flares, and possibly most of the Crab Nebula's high energy emission, are accelerated via…
Astrophysical observations suggest that magnetic reconnection in relativistic plasmas plays an important role in the acceleration of energetic particles. Modeling this accurately requires numerical schemes capable of addressing large scales…