Related papers: Self-Shielding of X-rays and Gamma-Rays in Compact…
Photon-photon scattering, due to photons interacting with virtual electron-positron pairs, is an intriguing deviation from classical electromagnetism predicted by quantum electrodynamics (QED). Apart from being of fundamental interest in…
When an information-carrying lightbeam is (legally) swept across a surface at more than c, simple signal-propagation arguments allow the observed behavior of the moving image (or "sprite") to include time-reversal and pair-production…
Galactic $\gamma$-ray sources can be produced by either high-energy protons via proton-proton collisions or electrons/positrons via inverse Compton scattering. Distinguishing between the hadronic and leptonic origin of $\gamma$-ray emission…
We investigate a stationary pair production cascade in the outer magnetosphere of an isolated, spinning neutron star. The charge depletion due to global flows of charged particles, causes a large electric field along the magnetic field…
We have calculated gamma-ray radiative transport in regions of high energy density, such as gamma-ray burst source regions, using a discrete ordinate, discrete energy group method. The calculations include two-photon pair production and…
It is proposed that the gamma-ray photons that characterize the prompt emission of Gamma-Ray Bursts are produced through the Compton drag process, caused by the interaction of a relativistic fireball with a very dense soft photon bath. If…
There are now a half dozen young pulsars detected in high energy photons by the Compton GRO, showing a variety of emission efficiencies and pulse profiles. We present here a calculation of the pattern of high energy emission on the sky in a…
Using gamma-ray data from observations of the Milky Way, Andromeda (M31), and the cosmic background, we calculate conservative upper limits on the dark matter self-annihilation cross section to a number of final states, over a wide range of…
All-optical Compton sources are innovative, compact devices to produce high energy femtosecond X-rays. Here we present results on a single-pulse scheme that uses a plasma mirror to reflect the drive beam of a laser plasma accelerator and to…
The Fermi LAT discovery that classical novae produce >100 MeV gamma-rays establishes that shocks and relativistic particle acceleration are key features of these events. These shocks are likely to be radiative due to the high densities of…
Despite that gamma-ray bursts is a phenomenon quite different from accreting compact objects, it could be that their hard X-ray emission is associated with a very similar mechanism of energy dissipation. In both cases, we could deal with…
Electron-positron pair production by collision of photons is investigated in view of application to pulsar physics. We compute the absorption rate of individual gamma-ray photons by an arbitrary anisotropic distribution of softer photons,…
Electron-positron pairs may be produced near accreting black holes by a variety of physical processes, and the resulting pair plasma may be accelerated and collimated into a relativistic jet. Here we use a self-consistent dynamical and…
A method is suggested to produce, with the help of colliding laser photons with bunches of relativistic ions having two energy levels, both intense beams of monochromatic polarized X-ray fluorescence photons and significant number of X-ray…
A setup of a unique x-ray source is put forward employing a relativistic electron beam interacting with two counter-propagating laser pulses in the nonlinear few-photon regime. In contrast to Compton scattering sources, the envisaged x-ray…
As is well-known, the requirement that gamma ray bursts (GRB's) be optically thin to high energy photons yields a lower limit on the Lorentz factor (\gamma) of the expansion. In this paper, we provide a simple derivation of the lower limit…
Relativistic bulk motion with large Lorentz factors has recently been inferred for gamma-ray bursts regardless of whether they are of galactic or cosmological origin. This conclusion results from calculations of internal pair production…
Gamma-ray burst sources with a high luminosity can produce electron-positron pair cascades in their environment as a result of back-scattering of a seed fraction of their original hard spectrum. The resulting spectral modifications offer…
Relativistic strongly magnetized winds outflowing from fast-rotating compact objects like millisecond pulsars with surface magnetic fields of $\sim 10^{15}-10^{16}$ G are plausible sources of cosmological $\gamma$-ray bursts. In such winds,…
The process of photon splitting $\gamma \to \gamma \gamma$ in a strong magnetic field is investigated both below and above the pair creation threshold. Contrary to the statement by Baier et al., the ``allowed'' channel $\alw$ is shown not…