Year: 2022
Type: article
Abstract: Magnetic reconnection in relativistic plasmas is well established as a fast and efficient particle accelerator, capable of explaining the most dramatic astrophysical flares. With particle-in-cell simulations, we demonstrate the importance of nonideal fields for the early stages ("injection") of particle acceleration. Most of the particles ending up with high energies (near or above the mean magnetic energy per particle) must have passed through nonideal regions where the assumptions of ideal magnetohydrodynamics are broken (i.e., regions with E>B or nonzero E_{∥}=E·B/B), whereas most of the particles that do not experience nonideal fields end up with Lorentz factors of order unity. Thus, injection by nonideal fields is a necessary prerequisite for further acceleration. Our results have important implications for the origin of nonthermal particles in high-energy astrophysical sources.
Source: Physical Review Letters
Author: Lorenzo Sironi
Institution: Columbia University
Language: English
Subfield: Nuclear and High Energy Physics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
Awards: COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: UNVEILING THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN MAGNETIC RECONNECTION AND TURBULENCE-THEORY AND MODELING, Collaborative Research: WoU-MMA: Bridging the gap between fluid and plasma scales in AGN jets, WoU-MMA Collaborative research: Turbulence and Reconnection in Magnetically-Dominated Astrophysical Plasmas, G8889489824
OpenAlex ID: W4221156192