Related papers: Fast particle acceleration in three-dimensional re…
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…
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…
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…
The importance of magnetic reconnection as an energy release mechanism in many solar, stellar, magnetospheric and astrophysical phenomena has long been recognised. Reconnection is the only mechanism by which magnetic fields can globally…
Using analytical and numerical methods (fluid and particle-in-cell simulations) we study a number of model problems involving merger of magnetic flux tubes in relativistic magnetically-dominated plasma. Mergers of current-carrying flux…
We propose a new way of quick and very efficient acceleration of protons and/or electrons in relativistic bulk flows. The new mechanism takes advantage of conversion of particles from the charged state (protons or electrons/positrons) into…
The afterglow emission from gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) is usually interpreted as synchrotron radiation from electrons accelerated at the GRB external shock, that propagates with relativistic velocities into the magnetized interstellar medium.…
The factors that control the maximum energy attained by protons and electrons during magnetic reconnection are investigated analytically and using large-scale simulations with the \textit{kglobal} model. Previous work revealed that a strong…
Magnetic reconnection is a ubiquitous process in astrophysical plasmas and an efficient mechanism for particle acceleration. Using 2.5D magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations with a co-evolving fluid-particle framework, we investigate how…
Rapid gamma-ray flares pose an astrophysical puzzle, requiring mechanisms both to accelerate energetic particles and to produce fast observed variability. These dual requirements may be satisfied by collisionless relativistic magnetic…
Mathematics demonstrates that an ideally evolving magnetic field has an exponentially increasing sensitivity to non-ideal effects for all but truly exceptional evolutions. On a time scale that depends only logarithmically on the magnitude…
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…
To use a 3D numerical MHD experiment representing magnetic flux emerging into an open field region as a background field for tracing charged particles. The interaction between the two flux systems generates a localised current sheet where…
We investigate shock structure and particle acceleration in relativistic magnetized collisionless pair shocks by means of 2.5D and 3D particle-in-cell simulations. We explore a range of inclination angles between the pre-shock magnetic…
I review a new rapidly growing area of high-energy plasma astrophysics --- radiative magnetic reconnection, i.e., a reconnection regime where radiation reaction influences reconnection dynamics, energetics, and nonthermal particle…
Efficient relativistic turbulent acceleration of particles is indicated by recent astrophysical observations. The Type II mechanism with acceleration due to the temporal variations of magnetic field strengths remains underexplored. The…
Relativistic magnetic reconnection is a powerful agent through which magnetic energy can be tapped in astrophysics, energizing particles that then produce observed radiation. In some systems, the highest energy photons come from particles…
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…
Energy dissipation in collisionless plasmas is a longstanding fundamental physics problem. Although it is well known that magnetic reconnection and turbulence are coupled and transport energy from system-size scales to sub-proton scales,…
In addition to the ponderomotive acceleration of highly relativistic electrons at interaction of very short and very intense laser pulses, a further acceleration is derived from the interaction of these electron beams with the spontaneous…