Particle Acceleration and Magnetic Dissipation in Relativistic Current Sheet of Pair Plasmas

By S. Zenitani, Masahiro Hoshino. 2007

184 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We study linear and nonlinear development of relativistic and ultrarelativistic current sheets of pair (e±) plasmas with antiparallel magnetic fields. Two types of two-dimensional problems are investigated by particle-in-cell simulations. First, we present the development of relativistic magnetic reconnection, whose outflow speed is on the order of the light speed c. It is demonstrated that particles are strongly accelerated in and around the reconnection region and that most of the magnetic energy is converted into a "nonthermal" part of plasma kinetic energy. Second, we present another two-dimensional problem of a current sheet in a cross field plane. In this case, the relativistic drift kink instability (RDKI) occurs. Particle acceleration also takes place, but the RDKI quickly dissipates the magnetic energy into plasma heat. We discuss the mechanism of particle acceleration and the theory of the RDKI in detail. It is important that properties of these two processes are similar in the relativistic regime of T ≳ mc2, as long as we consider the kinetics. Comparison of the two processes indicates that magnetic dissipation by the RDKI is a more favorable process in the relativistic current sheet. Therefore, the striped pulsar wind scenario should be reconsidered by the RDKI.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3be439377c1367c182b66267087b5ac0778cace6

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Citations in the corpus

Pulsar Wind Nebulae as Cosmic Pevatrons: A Current Sheet’s Tale (2012, background): “…dissipation are collisionless tearing and drift-kink instabilities of the current sheet, considered as if it were a flat sheet (Coroniti 1990; Zenitani and Hoshino 2007) and an interesting Weibel-like instability due to interaction between the sheets (Arons 2008), an effect strongest in the…”
The physics of gamma-ray bursts & relativistic jets (2014, background): “A number of groups have carried out numerical Particle-In-Cell (PIC) studies of reconnection and particle acceleration (e.g. Zenitani and Hoshino, 2001, 2007, 2008; Jaroschek et al., 2004; Bessho and Bhattacharjee, 2007, 2012; Pétri and Lyubarsky, 2007; Liu et al., 2011; Sironi and Spitkovsky,…”
PARTICLE ACCELERATION AND PLASMA DYNAMICS DURING MAGNETIC RECONNECTION IN THE MAGNETICALLY DOMINATED REGIME (2015, background): “This is in contrast to the earlier kinetic simulations (Zenitani & Hoshino 2005a, 2007, 2008).”
Plasmoids in relativistic reconnection, from birth to adulthood: first they grow, then they go (2016, background): “…an unperturbed pair plasma that goes unstable via the tearing instability (seeded by numerical noise), the growth time of the fastest growing mode increases with the current sheet thickness as∆5/2 (e.g., Zenitani & Hoshino 2007), at fixed magnetizationσ and overdensityη. c© 2015 RAS, MNRAS000, 1–??”
SIMULATIONS OF PARTICLE ACCELERATION BEYOND THE CLASSICAL SYNCHROTRON BURNOFF LIMIT IN MAGNETIC RECONNECTION: AN EXPLANATION OF THE CRAB FLARES (2013, methodology): “The initial setup is very similar to our previous study (Cerutti et al. 2012b), which is standard in such reconnection simulations (Zenitani & Hoshino 2001, 2007, 2008; Jaroschek et al. 2004b; Bessho & Bhattacharjee 2007, 2012; Daughton & Karimabadi 2007; Pétri & Lyubarsky 2007; Lyubarsky &…”
Non-thermal particle acceleration in collisionless relativistic electron-proton reconnection (2016, background): “…reconnection can explain observed high-energy radiation—nonthermal acceleration in relativistic pair-plasma reconnection has been much studied (Zenitani & Hoshino 2001, 2005, 2007, 2008; Larrabee et al. 2003; Jaroschek et al. 2004; Lyubarsky & Liverts 2008; Liu et al. 2011; Cerutti et al.…”
RELATIVISTIC RECONNECTION: AN EFFICIENT SOURCE OF NON-THERMAL PARTICLES (2014, background): “In particular, the DK mode is expected to result in heating, not in particle acceleration (Zenitani & Hoshino 2007).”
A Reconnection Switch to Trigger gamma-Ray Burst Jet Dissipation (2010, background): “Relativistic reconnection is an active area of research (Watanabe & Yokoyama 2006; Hesse & Zenitani 2007; Komissarov, Barkov & Lyutikov 2007; Zenitani & Hoshino 2007; Zenitani & Hesse 2008; Zenitani, Hesse & Klimas 2009; Tenbarge et al. 2010), so aspects of this work may require modification.”
Magnetic Reconnection in Astrophysical and (2009, background): “A common feature of these works is that the reconnection rate is relativistic, and the reconnection electric field is so strong that particles in the diffusion region can be accelerated to high energies or heated to high temperatures (Zenitani & Hoshino 2007).”
ACCELERATION OF PARTICLES AT THE TERMINATION SHOCK OF A RELATIVISTIC STRIPED WIND (2011, methodology): “In particular, in 3D we expect the current sheet to be folded, by effect of the so-called drift-kink instability (Zenitani & Hoshino 2005a, 2007).”