Related papers: Electron acceleration and thermalization at magnet…
We present results from the first experimental study of strongly radiatively-cooled magnetic reconnection. Two exploding aluminum wire arrays, driven simultaneously by the Z machine ($I_{max} = 20 \, \text{MA}$, $t_{\text{rise}} = 300 \,…
During the recovery phase of a magnetic storm, fluxes of relativistic ($>1$ MeV) electrons in the inner magnetosphere ($3\le L \le 6$) increase to beyond pre-storm levels, reaching a peak about 4 days after the initiation of the storm. In…
We identify a mechanism for magnetic field generation in the interaction of intense electromagnetic waves and underdense plasmas. We show that Raman scattered plasma waves trap and heat the electrons preferentially in their propagation…
Conversion of electromagnetic energy into magnetohydrodynamic energy occurs when the electric conductivity changes from negligible to finite values. This process is relevant during the epoch of reheating of the early Universe at the end of…
Magnetic reconnection in solar flares can efficiently generate non-thermal electron beams. The energetic electrons can, in turn, cause radio waves through microscopic plasma instabilities as they propagate through the ambient plasma along…
Here we investigate some aspects of stochastic acceleration of ultrarelativistic electrons by magnetic turbulence. In particular, we discuss the steady-state energy spectra of particles undergoing momentum diffusion due to resonant…
A study of the role of microinstabilities at the reconnection separatrix can play in heating the electrons during the transition from inflow to outflow is being presented. We find that very strong flow shears at the separatrix layer lead to…
Recent observations of excess radiation at extreme ultraviolet and hard X-ray energies straddling the well known thermal soft X-ray emission have provided new tools and puzzles for investigation of the acceleration of nonthermal particles…
We investigate a series of Earthward bursty bulk flows (BBFs) observed by the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) spacecraft in Earth's magnetotail at (-24, 7, 4) RE in Geocentric Solar Magnetospheric (GSM) coordinates. At the leading edges of…
We investigate heating and acceleration of protons from a thermal gas with a generic diffusion and acceleration model, and subject to Coulomb scattering and energy loss, as was carried out in Petrosian & East (2008) for electrons. As…
Using a kinetic simulation of magnetic reconnection it was recently shown that magnetic-field-aligned electric fields (E||) can be present over large spatial scales in reconnection exhausts. The largest values of E|| are observed within…
Weakly magnetized shock waves are paramount to a large diversity of environments, including supernova remnants, blazars, and binary-neutron-star mergers. Understanding the distribution of energy between electrons and ions within these…
The nonthermal particle acceleration during magnetic reconnection remains a fundamental topic in several astrophysical phenomena, such as solar flares, pulsar wind, magnetars, etc, for more than half a century, and one of the unresolved…
We report on the experimental observation of electron heating in electron-only magnetic reconnection in laser-driven laboratory mini-magnetospheres on the Large Plasma Device (LAPD) at the University of California, Los Angeles. In this…
Electron beam energies in Transmission Electron Microscopes (TEMs) reach the relativistic realm constituting Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) the appropriate framework for the study of electron matter interaction in TEMs. We focus on the…
A new electron acceleration mechanism is identified that develops when a relativistically intense laser irradiates the wedge of an over-dense plasma. This induces a diffracted electromagnetic wave with a significant longitudinal electric…
We have used the high-resolution data of the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission dayside phase to identify twenty-one previously unreported encounters with the electron diffusion region (EDR), as evidenced by electron agyrotropy, ion…
Strongly magnetized plasmas, characterized by having a gyrofrequency larger than the plasma frequency ($\beta = \omega_c/\omega_p \gg 1$), are known to exhibit novel transport properties. Previous works studying pure electron plasmas have…
Using Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) observations at the Earth's quasi-parallel bow shock we demonstrate that electrons are heated by two different mechanisms: a quasi-adiabatic heating process during magnetic field compression,…
Electron dynamics surrounding the X-line in magnetopause-type asymmetric reconnection is investigated using a two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulation. We study electron properties of three characteristic regions in the vicinity of the…