Related papers: Relativistic Particle Acceleration in a Folded Cur…
Efficient relativistic turbulent acceleration of particles is indicated by recent astrophysical observations. The Type II mechanism with acceleration due to the temporal variations of magnetic field strengths remains underexplored. The…
We report on the observation of rapid particle acceleration in numerical simulations of relativistic jet-plasma interactions and discuss the underlying mechanisms. The dynamics of a charge-neutral, narrow, electron-positron jet propagating…
We study the acceleration of electrons and protons interacting with localized, multiple, small-scale dissipation regions inside an evolving, turbulent active region. The dissipation regions are Unstable Current Sheets (UCS), and in their…
We present 2D MHD numerical simulations of tearing-unstable current sheets coupled to a population of non-thermal test-particles, in order to address the problem of numerical convergence with respect to grid resolution, numerical method and…
Recently, Bell has reanalysed the problem of wave excitation by cosmic rays propagating in the pre-cursor region of a supernova remnant shock front. He pointed out a strong, non-resonant, current-driven instability that had been overlooked…
Relativistic jets associated with active galactic nuclei and gamma-ray bursts propagate over huge distances without significant loss of momentum. At the same time they are bright emitters, which is indicative of strong energy dissipation.…
Particle energization in shear flows is invoked to explain non-thermal emission from the boundaries of relativistic astrophysical jets. Yet, the physics of particle injection, i.e., the mechanism that allows thermal particles to participate…
We investigate the self-consistent particle acceleration physics associated with the development of the kink instability (KI) in nonrelativistic, electron-ion plasma jets. Using 3D fully kinetic particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations, we show…
A new physical mechanism of the parallel acceleration of a turbulent magnetized plasma is discovered by using a Fokker-Planck phase space stochastic transport equation. It is found that the random walk of a charged particle is correlated…
We present results of test-particle simulations on both the first- and the second-order Fermi acceleration for relativistic parallel shock waves. Our studies suggest that the role of the second-order mechanism in the turbulent downstream of…
Magnetic reconnection is thought to be the dynamical mechanism underlying many explosive phenomena observed both in space and in the laboratory, though the question of how fast magnetic reconnection is triggered in such high Lundquist ($S$)…
Magnetic reconnection is believed to be the driver of many explosive phenomena in Astrophysics, from solar to gamma-ray flares in magnetars and in the Crab nebula. However, reconnection rates from classic MHD models are far too slow to…
Magnetic reconnection in laboratory, space and astrophysical plasmas is often invoked to explain explosive energy release and particle acceleration. However, the timescales involved in classical models within the macroscopic MHD regime are…
Kink-like flapping motions of current sheets are commonly observed in the magnetotail. Such oscillations have periods of a few minutes down to a few seconds and they propagate toward the flanks of the plasma sheet. Here, we report a…
Relativistic magnetic reconnection is one of the most fundamental mechanisms considered responsible for the acceleration of relativistic particles in astrophysical jets and magnetospheres of compact objects. Understanding the properties of…
Using our new 3-D relativistic electromagnetic particle (REMP) code parallelized with MPI, we have investigated long-term particle acceleration associated with an relativistic electron-positron jet propagating in an unmagnetized ambient…
Magnetic reconnection is invoked as one of the primary mechanisms to produce energetic particles. We employ large-scale three-dimensional (3D) particle-in-cell simulations of reconnection in magnetically-dominated ($\sigma=10$) pair plasmas…
The relaxation of field-line tension during magnetic reconnection gives rise to a universal Fermi acceleration process involving the curvature drift of particles. However, the efficiency of this mechanism is limited by the trapping of…
Cosmic ray (CR) currents through magnetised plasma drive strong instabilities producing amplification of the magnetic field. This amplification helps explain the CR energy spectrum as well as observations of supernova remnants and radio…
Shear flows, ubiquitous in space and astrophysical plasmas, can accelerate particles through turbulence excited by the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability. We present the first numerical study of particle acceleration in non-relativistic,…