Related papers: Pair-loaded electron-only magnetic reconnection us…
All-optical controlled injection and acceleration of electrons in a laser wakefield has recently been achieved (Faure et al, Nature v. 444 p. 737, 2006). Injection was made using a second counterpropagating laser pulse with the same…
Pulsars have been identified as good candidates for the acceleration of cosmic rays, up to ultra-high energies. However, a precise description of the acceleration processes at play is still to be established. Using 2D particle-in-cell…
Magnetic reconnection is often invoked to explain the non-thermal radiation of relativistic outflows, including jets of active galactic nuclei (AGN). Motivated by the largely unknown plasma composition of AGN jets, we study reconnection in…
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…
Magnetic reconnection is a ubiquitous and fundamental process in plasmas by which magnetic fields change their topology and release magnetic energy. Despite decades of research, the physics governing the reconnection process in many…
In magnetized astrophysical outflows, the dissipation of field energy into particle energy via magnetic reconnection is often invoked to explain the observed non-thermal signatures. By means of two- and three-dimensional particle-in-cell…
The mass symmetry between the two species in electron-positron (pair) plasmas has interesting consequences for collisionless magnetic reconnection because the Hall term, which plays a crucial role in supporting fast reconnection in…
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.…
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…
Fully kinetic two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations are used to study electron acceleration at high-Mach-number nonrelativistic perpendicular shocks. SNR shocks are mediated by the Weibel instability which is excited because of an…
We report observations of direct evidence of energetic protons being accelerated above ~400 keV within the reconnection exhaust of a heliospheric current sheet (HCS) crossing by NASA's Parker Solar Probe (PSP) at a distance of ~16.25 solar…
Supplementing our STM and electron emission studies investigations, concluding in electron pairing in strong laser fields [1], further time-of-flight electron emission studies were carried out, changing the angle of polarization of the…
Magnetic reconnection is a ubiquitous process in astrophysical plasmas, responsible for the explosive conversion of magnetic energy into thermal and kinetic energy. In extreme astrophysical systems, such as black hole coronae and neutron…
The expansion of a charge-neutral cloud of electrons and positrons with the temperature 1 MeV into an unmagnetized ambient plasma is examined with a 2D particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation. The pair outflow drives solitary waves in the ambient…
Nonperturbative coupling between cavity photons and excitons leads to formation of hybrid light-matter excitations termed polaritons. In structures where photon absorption leads to creation of excitons with aligned permanent dipoles, the…
Magnetic reconnection is thought to be the driver for many explosive phenomena in the universe. The energy release and particle acceleration during reconnection have been proposed as a mechanism for producing high-energy emissions and…
In the standard model of magnetic reconnection, both ions and electrons couple to the newly reconnected magnetic field lines and are ejected away from the reconnection diffusion region in the form of bidirectional burst ion and electron…
Magnetic reconnection in the relativistic and trans-relativistic regimes is able to accelerate particles to hard power law energy spectra $f \propto \gamma^{-p}$ (approaching $p=1$). The underlying acceleration mechanism that determines the…
The creation of an electron space charge in a dipole magnetic trap and the subsequent injection of positrons has been experimentally demonstrated. Positrons (5eV) were magnetically guided from their source and injected into the trapping…
Simulations of relativistic plasmas traditionally focus on the dynamics of two-species mixtures of charged particles under the influence of external magnetic fields and those generated by particle currents. However, the extreme conditions…