Related papers: Electron acceleration and heating in collisionless…
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 study the electrical conductivity of finite-temperature crust of a warm compact star which may be formed in the aftermath of a supernova explosion or a binary neutron star merger as well as when a cold neutron star is heated by accretion…
We numerically study magnetic reconnection on different spatial scales and at different heights in the weakly ionized plasma of the low solar atmosphere (around $300-800$~km above the solar surface) within a reactive 2.5 D multi-fluid…
Heating of charged particles via collisionless shocks, while ubiquitous in the universe, is an intriguing yet puzzling plasma phenomenon. One outstanding question is how electrons and ions approach an equilibrium after they were heated to…
Two-dimensional Particle-In-Cell simulations are used to explore collisionless shock acceleration in the corona plasma surrounding the compressed core of an inertial confinement fusion pellet. We show that an intense laser pulse interacting…
We report the results of 1D particle-in-cell simulations of ultrarelativistic shock waves in proton-electron-positron plasmas. We consider magnetized shock waves, in which the upstream medium carries a large scale magnetic field, directed…
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…
Hybrid-Vlasov-Maxwell simulations of magnetized plasma turbulence including non-linear electron-inertia effects in a generalized Ohm's law are presented. When fluctuation energy is injected on scales sufficiently close to ion-kinetic…
We investigate heating and acceleration of protons from a thermal gas with a generic diffusion and acceleration model, and subject to Coulomb scattering and energy loss, as was carried out in Petrosian & East (2008) for electrons. As…
The first self-consistent simulations of electron acceleration during magnetic reconnection in a macroscale system are presented. Consistent with solar flare observations the spectra of energetic electrons take the form of power-laws that…
Seventy measurements of electron heating at the Earth's quasi-perpendicular bow shock are analyzed in terms of Maxwellian-temperatures obtained from fits to the core electrons that separate thermal heating from supra-thermal acceleration.…
A new measure to identify a small-scale dissipation region in collisionless magnetic reconnection is proposed. The energy transfer from the electromagnetic field to plasmas in the electron's rest frame is formulated as a Lorentz-invariant…
In a grid-less Electron Cyclotron Resonance (ECR) plasma thruster with a diverging magnetic nozzle, the magnitude of the ambipolar field accelerating the positive ions depends of the perpendicular energy gained by the electrons. This work…
Fast Ignition Inertial Confinement Fusion is a variant of inertial fusion in which DT fuel is first compressed to high density and then ignited by a relativistic electron beam generated by a fast (< 20 ps) ultra-intense laser pulse, which…
This short article highlights the unsolved problems of magnetic reconnection in collisionless plasma. The advanced in-situ plasma measurements and simulations enabled scientists to gain a novel understanding of magnetic reconnection. Still,…
We study a relativistic collisionless electron-positron shock propagating into an unmagnetized ambient medium using 2D particle-in-cell simulations of unprecedented duration and size. The shock generates intermittent magnetic structures of…
Recent efforts to include kinetic effects in fluid simulations of plasmas have been very promising. Concerning collisionless magnetic reconnection, it has been found before that damping of the pressure tensor to isotropy leads to good…
We present preliminary results of particle-in-cell simulations of collisionless magnetic reconnection for conditions that apply to magnetically dominated pair plasma jets such as those in gamma-ray bursts. We find similar behaviour to…
Kinetic simulations of 3D collisionless magnetic reconnection with a guide field show a dramatic enhancement of energetic electron production when compared with 2D systems. In the 2D systems, electrons are trapped in magnetic islands that…
The plasma dynamics resulting from the simultaneous impact, of two equal, ultra-intense laser pulses, in two spatially separated spots, onto a dense target is studied via particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations. The simulations show that…