Related papers: Direct measurement of non-thermal electron acceler…
Cosmic Ray (CR) acceleration still challenges the researchers. Fast particles may be accelerated in astrophysical environments by a variety of processes. Acceleration in magnetic reconnection sites in particular, has lately attracted the…
Turbulent behavior at sub-proton scales in magnetized plasmas is important for a full understanding of the energetics of astrophysical flows such as the solar wind. We study the formation of electron temperature anisotropy due to…
It has been proposed that particles bouncing between magnetized flows converging in a reconnection region can be accelerated by the first order Fermi mechanism. Analytical considerations of this mechanism have shown that the spectral index…
The manuscript deals with electron acceleration by a laser pulse in a plasma with a static uniform magnetic field $B_*$. The laser pulse propagates perpendicular to the magnetic field lines with the polarization chosen such that…
We examine the impact of several factors on electron acceleration by a laser pulse and the resulting electron energy gain. Specifically, we consider the role played by: 1) static longitudinal electric field; 2) static transverse electric…
Magnetic reconnection is the key mechanism for energy release in solar eruptions, where the high-temperature emission is the primary diagnostic for investigating the plasma properties during the reconnection process. Non-thermal broadening…
This dissertation explores the interaction between high-intensity lasers and plasmas to accelerate electrons and produce radiation via experimental and computational efforts. The laser pulses used in this dissertation have ultrashort…
Magnetic reconnection converts magnetic energy into thermal and kinetic energy in plasma. Among numerous candidate mechanisms, ion acoustic instabilities driven by the relative drift between ions and electrons, or equivalently electric…
Laser-accelerated electron beams have been created at a kHz repetition rate from the {\it reflection} of intense ($\sim10^{18}$ W/cm$^2$), $\sim$40 fs laser pulses focused on a continuous water-jet in an experiment at the Air Force Research…
The mechanisms controlling the relative heating and energization of electrons and protons during magnetic reconnection are explored. Simulations are carried out with the kglobal model, which produces bulk heating and the extended powerlaw…
We investigate the distribution of particle acceleration sites, independently of the actual acceleration mechanism, during plasmoid-dominated, relativistic collisionless magnetic reconnection by analyzing the results of a particle-in-cell…
We derive, and validate numerically, an analytical model for electron-only magnetic reconnection applicable to strongly magnetized plasmas. Our model predicts sub-ion-scale reconnection rates significantly higher than those pertaining to…
While collisionless plasmas are ubiquitously present near astrophysical compact objects, the impact that their composition has on the high-energy emission is presently unknown. We present the first investigation of particle-acceleration…
Modeling collisionless magnetic reconnection rate is an outstanding challenge in basic plasma physics research. While the seemingly universal rate of an order $\mathcal{O}(0.1)$ is often reported in the low-$\beta$ regime, it is not clear…
We use 2D and 3D hybrid (kinetic ions - fluid electrons) simulations to investigate particle acceleration and magnetic field amplification at non-relativistic astrophysical shocks. We show that diffusive shock acceleration operates for…
We demonstrate in this research the quasi-monoenergetic electron and proton acceleration through three dimensional particle-in-cell simulations of short petawatt circular polarized laser pulse interactions with near critical density…
Charged particles can be accelerated to high energies by collisionless shock waves in astrophysical environments, such as supernova remnants. By interacting with the magnetized ambient medium, these shocks can transfer energy to particles.…
We conduct a multiparametric study of driven magnetic reconnection relevant to recent experiments on colliding magnetized laser produced plasmas using particle-in-cell simulations. Varying the background plasma density, plasma resistivity,…
Recent experiments have demonstrated magnetic reconnection between colliding plasma plumes, where the reconnecting magnetic fields were self-generated in the plasma by the Biermann battery effect. Using fully kinetic 3-D simulations, we…
We investigate shock structure and particle acceleration in relativistic magnetized collisionless electron-ion shocks by means of 2.5D particle-in-cell simulations with ion-to-electron mass ratios (m_i/m_e) ranging from 16 to 1000. We…