Related papers: Preferential Positron Acceleration in Relativistic…
Plasma-based positron acceleration is still an open question, as the most efficient regimes for electron acceleration (quasi-linear and blowout) are not directly applicable to positrons. Nevertheless, positron acceleration is a stepping…
Shock acceleration is a ubiquitous phenomenon in astrophysical plasmas. Plasma waves and their associated instabilities (e.g., Buneman, Weibel and other two-stream instabilities) created in collisionless shocks are responsible for particle…
Shock acceleration is an ubiquitous phenomenon in astrophysical plasmas. Plasma waves and their associated instabilities (e.g., the Buneman instability, two-streaming instability, and the Weibel instability) created in the shocks are…
In this article, we concentrate on the basic physics of relativistic plasma wave accelerators. The generation of relativistic plasma waves by intense lasers or electron beams in low-density plasmas is important in the quest for producing…
The source of high-energy protons (>500 MeV) responsible for the so-called ground level enhancements (GLEs) remains an open question in solar physics. One of the candidates is a shock wave driven by a coronal mass ejection, which is thought…
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…
This paper is the first in the series of papers aiming to study interaction of the electro-magnetic precursor waves generated at the front of a relativistic shock with the upstream flow. It is motivated by a simple consideration showing…
Gamma-ray bursts are often the brightest objects in the sky during their short life. Particle acceleration in trans-relativistic shocks, internal to the main blastwave, may explain the early intensity peaks, and particle acceleration in the…
Nonthermal radiation observed from astrophysical systems containing relativistic jets and shocks e.g. gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and microquasars commonly exhibit power-law emission spectra. Recent PIC simulations…
We study the acceleration of charged particles by ultra-relativistic shocks using test-particle Monte-Carlo simulations. Two field configurations are considered: (i) shocks with uniform upstream magnetic field in the plane of the shock, and…
The excitation of surface plasmons with ultra-intense ($I\sim 5\times 10^{19}$ W/cm$^2$), high contrast ($\sim 10^{12}$) laser pulses on periodically-modulated solid targets has been recently demonstrated to produce collimated bunches of…
We study numerically the mechanisms of proton acceleration in gas-foil targets driven by an ultraintense femtosecond laser pulse. The target consists of a near-critical-density hydrogen gas layer of a few tens of microns attached to a solid…
We consider the acceleration of charged particles near ultra-relativistic shocks, with Lorentz factor Gamma_s >> 1. We present simulations of the acceleration process and compare these with results from semi-analytical calculations. We show…
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…
Electron motion in an oblique shock wave is studied by means of a one-dimensional, relativistic, electromagnetic, particle simulation code with full ion and electron dynamics. It is found that an oblique shock can produce electrons with…
Electron acceleration during magnetic reconnection is thought to play a key role in time-variable high-energy emission from astrophysical systems. By means of particle-in-cell simulations of trans-relativistic reconnection, we investigate…
We study motion of a relativistic charged particle in a plane slow electromagnetic wave and background uniform magnetic field. The wave propagates normally to the background field. Under certain conditions, the resonance between the wave…
We investigated the efficiency of coherent upstream large-amplitude electromagnetic wave emission via synchrotron maser instability at relativistic magnetized shocks by using two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations. We considered the…
Relativistic collisionless shocks are associated with efficient particle acceleration when propagating into weakly magnetized homogeneous media; as the magnetization increases, particle acceleration becomes suppressed. We demonstrate that…
Relativistic collisionless shocks are believed to be efficient particle accelerators. Nonlinear outcome of the interaction of accelerated particles that run ahead of the shock, the so-called "precursor", with the unperturbed plasma of the…