Related papers: Reconnection in a striped pulsar wind
Magnetic reconnection is a fundamental plasma process associated with conversion of the embedded magnetic field energy into kinetic and thermal plasma energy, via bulk acceleration and Ohmic dissipation. In many high-energy astrophysical…
Models invoking magnetic reconnection as the particle acceleration mechanism within relativistic jets often adopt a gradual energy dissipation profile within the jet. However, such a profile has yet to be reproduced in first-principles…
Magnetic reconnection associated to the double tearing mode (DTM) is investigated by means of resistive relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (RRMHD) simulations. A linearly unstable double current sheet system in two dimensional cartesian…
Magnetic reconnection is a fundamental mechanism of driving eruptive phenomena of different scales and may be coupled with turbulence as suggested by recent remote-sensing and in-situ observations. However, the specific physics behind the…
Using particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations, we study the evolution of a strongly magnetized plasma slab propagating into a finite density ambient medium. Like previous work, we find that the slab breaks into discrete magnetic pulses. The…
We speculate that stationary force-free pulsar magnetospheres are screw unstable, and the spin-down power of real pulsars is carried by turbulent Poynting jets. The turbulent jet entrains poloidal flux as it propagates away from the star.…
Three-dimensional magnetic reconnection is a fundamental plasma process crucial for heating the solar corona and generating the solar wind, but resolving and characterizing it on the Sun remains challenging. Using high-quality data from the…
Magnetic reconnection is a fundamental physical process converting magnetic energy into not only plasma energy but also particle energy in various astrophysical phenomena. In this letter, we show a unique dataset of a solar flare where…
Magnetic reconnection plays a crucial role in powering solar flares, production of energetic particles, and plasma heating. However, where the magnetic reconnections occur, how and where the released magnetic energy is transported, and how…
The role of MHD turbulence in astrophysical environments is still highly debated. An important question that permeates this debate is the transport of magnetic flux. This is particularly important, for instance, in the context of star…
Fast reconnection operating in magnetically dominated plasmas is often invoked in models for magnetar giant flares, for magnetic dissipation in pulsar winds, or to explain the gamma-ray flares observed in the Crab nebula, hence its…
Many stars across all classes possess strong enough magnetic fields to influence dynamical flow of material off the stellar surface. For the case of massive stars (O and B types), about 10\% of them harbour strong, globally ordered (mostly…
The Crab nebula is one of the most studied cosmic particle accelerators, shining brightly across the entire electromagnetic spectrum up to very high-energy gamma rays. It is known from radio to gamma-ray observations that the nebula is…
This review discusses the physics of magnetic reconnection, a process in which the magnetic field topology changes and magnetic energy is converted to kinetic energy, in pair plasmas in the relativistic regime. We focus on recent progress…
The theoretical prediction that magnetic reconnection spontaneously drives turbulence has been supported by magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) and kinetic simulations. While reconnection with externally driven turbulence is accepted as an effective…
Spider pulsars are compact binary systems composed of a millisecond pulsar and a low-mass companion. The relativistic magnetically-dominated pulsar wind impacts onto the companion, ablating it and slowly consuming its atmosphere. The…
The physical processes that heat the solar corona and accelerate the solar wind remain unknown after many years of study. Some have suggested that the wind is driven by waves and turbulence in open magnetic flux tubes, and others have…
We discuss some aspects of magnetic reconnection which could help in understanding many aspects of magnetic plasma interactions. We will show that the helical structure often observed in polar jets is a natural consequence of magnetic…
Magnetic reconnection in current sheets converts magnetic energy into particle energy. The process may play an important role in the acceleration and heating of the solar wind close to the Sun. Observations from Parker Solar Probe provide a…
The propagation of reconnection signatures and their associated energy are examined using kinetic particle-in-cell simulations and Cluster satellite observations. It is found that the quadrupolar out-of-plane magnetic field near the…