Related papers: Relativistic Blastwaves and Synchrotron Emission
Astrophysical explosions are accompanied by the propagation of a shock wave through an ambient medium. Depending on the mass and energy involved in the explosion, the shock velocity $V$ can be non-relativistic ($V \ll c$, where $c$ is the…
Sub-photospheric shock dissipation is one of the main proposed mechanisms for producing the prompt gamma-ray burst (GRB) emission. Such shocks are mediated by scattering of radiation. We introduce a time dependent, special relativistic code…
Context. Gamma-ray binaries are systems that radiate the dominant part of their non-thermal emission in the gamma-ray band. In a wind-driven scenario, these binaries are thought to consist of a pulsar orbiting a massive star, accelerating…
Motivated by the detection of very high energy gamma-rays deep in the afterglow emission of a gamma-ray burst, we revisit predictions of the maximum energy to which electrons can be accelerated at a relativistic blast wave. Acceleration at…
We carry out a numerical hydrodynamical modeling for the evolution of a relativistic collimated outflow, as it interacts with the surrounding medium, and calculate the light-curve resulting from synchrotron emission of the shocked fluid.…
A sufficiently powerful astrophysical source with power law luminosity in time will give rise to a self-similar relativistic blast wave with a reverse shock traveling into the ejecta and a forward shock moving into the surrounding medium.…
Particle acceleration in relativistic shocks is not a very well understood subject. Owing to that difficulty, radiation spectra from relativistic shocks, such as those in GRB afterglows, have been often modelled by making assumptions about…
Gamma-ray bursts are most luminous explosions in the universe. Their ejecta are believed to move towards Earth with a relativistic speed. The interaction between this "relativistic jet" and a circum burst medium drives a pair of (forward…
All galaxies without a radio-loud AGN follow a tight correlation between their global FIR and radio synchrotron luminosities, which is believed to be ultimately the result of the formation of massive stars. Two face-on colliding pairs of…
Most recent extragalactic models of gamma-ray bursts consider the expansion of a relativistic blast wave, emanating from a solar-mass type progenitor, into the surrounding interstellar medium as the site for their activity. The popular…
We present evidence that relativistic shocks propagating in unmagnetized plasmas can self-consistently accelerate particles. We use long-term two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations to study the well-developed shock structure in…
The connection between Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) and their afterglows is currently not well understood. Afterglow models of synchrotron emission generated by external shocks in the GRB fireball model predict emission detectable in the…
The prompt GRB emission is thought to arise from electrons accelerated in internal shocks propagating within a highly relativistic outflow. The launch of Fermi offers the prospect of observations with unprecedented sensitivity in…
Particle acceleration in relativistic shocks is studied analytically in the test-particle, small-angle scattering limit, for an arbitrary velocity-angle diffusion function D. Accurate analytic expressions for the spectral index s are…
The shock waves produce relativistic particles via the diffusive shock acceleration (DSA) mechanism. Among various circumstances, fast acceleration has been expected for perpendicular shocks. We investigate the acceleration time and the…
We investigate the dynamics and radiation from a relativistic blast-wave which decelerates as it sweeps up ambient matter. The bulk kinetic energy of the blast-wave shell is converted into internal energy by the process of accreting…
Observations of gamma-ray burst (GRB) afterglows have long provided the most detailed information about the origin of this spectacular phenomena. The model that is most commonly used to extract physical properties of the event from the…
Relativistic shocks are present in all high-energy astrophysical processes involving relativistic plasma outflows interacting with their ambient medium. While a well understood process in the context of relativistic hydrodynamics and ideal…
In this thesis different numerical methods, as well as applications of the methods to a number of current problems in relativistic astrophysics, are presented. In the first part the theoretical foundation and numerical implementation of a…
Using our new 3-D relativistic electromagnetic particle (REMP) code parallelized with MPI, we investigated long-term particle acceleration associated with a relativistic electron-positron jet propagating in an unmagnetized ambient…