Related papers: Modelling Relativistic Astrophysics at the Large a…
The accurate modelling of astrophysical scenarios involving compact objects and magnetic fields, such as the collapse of rotating magnetized stars to black holes or the phenomenology of gamma-ray bursts, requires the solution of the…
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…
Radiative transfer plays a major role in high-energy astrophysics. In multiple scenarios and in a broad range of energy scales, the coupling between matter and radiation is essential to understand the interplay between theory, observations…
Magnetic reconnection is a leading mechanism for magnetic energy conversion and high-energy non-thermal particle production in a variety of high-energy astrophysical objects, including ones with relativistic ion-electron plasmas (e.g.,…
Scientific codes are an indispensable link between theory and experiment; in (astro-)plasma physics, such numerical tools are one window into the universe's most extreme flows of energy. The discretization of Maxwell's equations - needed to…
Magnetic reconnection in relativistic collisionless plasmas can accelerate particles and power high-energy emission in various astrophysical systems. Whereas most previous studies focused on relativistic reconnection in pair plasmas, less…
Charged particles can be accelerated to high energies by collisionless shock waves in astrophysical environments, such as supernova remnants. By interacting with the magnetized ambient medium, these shocks can transfer energy to particles.…
We present a new general relativistic hydrodynamics code specifically designed to study magneto-rotational, relativistic, stellar core collapse. The code is an extension of an existing (and thoroughly tested) hydrodynamics code, which has…
Shocks act to convert incoming supersonic flows to heat, and in collisionless plasmas the shock layer forms on kinetic plasma scales through collective electromagnetic effects. These collisionless shocks have been observed in many space and…
Relativistic collisionless shocks are believed to be efficient particle accelerators. Nonlinear outcome of the interaction of accelerated particles that run ahead of the shock, the so-called "precursor", with the unperturbed plasma of the…
Collisionless plasma shock theory, which applies for example to the afterglow of gamma ray bursts, still contains key issues that are poorly understood. In this paper we study charged particle dynamics in a highly relativistic collisionless…
Collisionless shocks play a key role in the heliosphere at planetary bow shocks by governing the conversion of the upstream bulk kinetic energy of the solar wind flow to other forms of energy in the downstream, including bulk plasma heat,…
Hydrodynamics is known to describe matter created in high energy heavy ion collisions well. Large deposition of energy by passing jets should create not only the sound waves, already discussed in literature, but also the shocks waves of…
The detection of gravitational waves has opened a new era for astronomy, allowing for the combined use of gravitational wave and electromagnetic emissions to directly probe the physics of compact objects, still poorly understood. So far,…
We use the Los Alamos VPIC code to investigate particle acceleration in relativistic, unmagnetized, collisionless electron-ion plasmas. We run our simulations both with a realistic proton-to-electron mass ratio m_p/m_e = 1836, as well as…
We present a general formulation of special-relativistic magnetohydrodynamics and derive exact radially self-similar solutions for axisymmetric outflows from strongly magnetized, rotating compact objects. We generalize previous work by…
When particle speeds are large the motion of a collisionless plasma is modeled by the relativistic Vlasov Maxwell system. Large time behavior of solutions which depend on one position variable and two momentum variables is considered. In…
Shock acceleration is an ubiquitous phenomenon in astrophysical plasmas. Plasma waves and their associated instabilities (e.g., the Buneman instability, two-streaming instability, and the Weibel instability) created in the shocks are…
The acceleration of charged particles at astrophysical collisionless shock waves is one of the best studied processes for the energization of particles to ultrarelativistic energies, required by multifrequency observations in a variety of…
The physics of collisionless relativistic shocks with a moderate magnetization is presented. Micro-physics is relevant to explain the most energetic radiative phenomena of Nature, namely that of the termination shock of Gamma Ray Bursts. A…