The Generation of Nonthermal Particles in the Relativistic Magnetic Reconnection of Pair Plasmas

By S. Zenitani, Masahiro Hoshino. 2014

270 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Particle acceleration in the magnetic reconnection of electron-positron plasmas is studied by using a particle-in-cell simulation. It is found that a significantly large number of nonthermal particles are generated by the inductive electric fields around an X-type neutral line when the reconnection outflow velocity, which is known to be an Alfvén velocity, is on the order of the speed of light. In such a relativistic reconnection regime, we also find that electrons and positrons form a power-law-like energy distribution through their drift along the reconnection electric field under the relativistic Speiser motion. A brief discussion of the relevance of these results to the current sheet structure, which has an antiparallel magnetic field in astrophysical sources of synchrotron radiation, is presented.

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

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4830afa371f8381623c5c8c715c76472c7002a68

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. L. Sironi
2. D. Giannios
3. A. Spitkovsky
4. Bing Zhang
5. M. Petropoulou
6. Pawan Kumar
7. B. Cerutti
8. A. Philippov

In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

1. L. Sironi
2. D. Giannios
3. M. Petropoulou
4. A. Spitkovsky
5. B. Cerutti
6. Y. Lyubarsky
7. Bing Zhang
8. Hui Li

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. L. Sironi
2. D. Giannios
3. A. Spitkovsky
4. M. Petropoulou
5. B. Cerutti
6. Bing Zhang
7. A. Philippov
8. Pawan Kumar

Citations in the corpus

• Particle Acceleration and Magnetic Dissipation in Relativistic Current Sheet of Pair Plasmas (2007, methodology): “However, simulations of pair plasma reconnection (Zenitani & Hoshino 2001, 2005b; Jaroschek et al. 2004; Bessho & Bhattacharjee 2005) reported fast reconnection rates [vin /vout or Ey /(cB0), Ey /(vAB0)] of 0.1 or above.”
• Relativistic Jets Shine through Shocks or Magnetic Reconnection (2015, background): “…for σ = 10 (as commonly assumed in blazar SED modeling), and becomes harder with increasing magnetization (Sironi & Spitkovsky2014; see also, e.g., Zenitani & Hoshino 2001; Jaroschek et al. 2004; Bessho & Bhattacharjee 2012; Kagan et al. 2013; Cerutti et al. 2014; Guo et al. 2014; Werner et…”
• Magnetic Reconnection in Astrophysical and (2009, background): “Reconnection in relativistic pair plasmas has recently been considered by a number of researchers, beginning with Zenitani & Hoshino 2001 (see also Jaroschek, Lesch & Treumann 2004; Zenitani & Hesse 2008).”
• ACCELERATION OF PARTICLES AT THE TERMINATION SHOCK OF A RELATIVISTIC STRIPED WIND (2011, background): “4(a)), due to the reconnection electric field parallel to the Xline (Zenitani & Hoshino 2001; Jaroschek et al. 2004; Lyubarsky & Liverts 2008).”
• Reconnection-driven plasmoids in blazars: fast flares on a slow envelope (2012, background): “Additional acceleration of particles takes place during the merging process of the plasmoids (Zenitani & Hoshino 2001; 2005; Drake et al. 2006, Sironi & Spitkovsky 2011; although the energy spectrum of the particles depends on the details and is still topic of investigation).”
• Are Quasar Jets Dominated by Poynting Flux? (2005, background): “This contrasts strongly with the narrow energy distributions of accelerated electrons predicted by the magnetic reconnection models (Zenitani & Hoshino 2001; Larrabee, Lovelace, & Romanova 2003).”
• 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): “The high-σ regime (σ > 1) has been explored in a number of papers using the Harris equilibrium (Zenitani & Hoshino 2001, 2007; Liu et al. 2011; Bessho & Bhattacharjee 2012; Cerutti et al. 2013; Sironi & Spitkovsky 2014; Melzani et al. 2014b; Werner et al. 2014).”
• On the relativistic magnetic reconnection (2005, methodology): “…acceleration in relativistic current sheets was studied both in the test particle approximation (Romanova & Lovelace 1992; Birk, Crusius-Wätzel & Lesch 2001; Larrabee, Lovelace & Romanova 2003, Kirk 2004) and in two-dimensional PIC simulations (Zenitani & Hoshino 2001; Jaroschek et al 2004).”
• Plasmoids in relativistic reconnection, from birth to adulthood: first they grow, then they go (2016, background): “21 tem sizes, particle acceleration by the reconnection electric field at X-points dominates (e.g.,Zenitani & Hoshino 2001).”
• 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): “…is believed to take place, including pulsar magnetospheres, pulsar winds, and pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe) (Coroniti 1990; Lyubarsky & Kirk 2001; Zenitani & Hoshino 2001; Kirk & Skjæraasen 2003; Kirk 2004; Contopoulos 2007a,b; Sironi & Spitkovsky 2011; Uzdensky et al. 2011; Cerutti et al.…”
• Particle acceleration in axisymmetric pulsar current sheets (2014, background): “PIC simulations of isolated current sheets show that relativistic reconnection in collisionless pair plasmas is fast and efficient at accelerating particles (e.g., Zenitani & Hoshino 2001; Jaroschek et al. 2004; Cerutti et al. 2014; c© 2014 RAS ar X iv :1 41 0.”
• RELATIVISTIC RECONNECTION: AN EFFICIENT SOURCE OF NON-THERMAL PARTICLES (2014, background): “Energization of particles in relativistic reconnection has been investigated in a number of PIC studies, both in two dimensions (2D; Zenitani & Hoshino 2001, 2007; Jaroschek et al. 2004; Bessho & Bhattacharjee 2005, 2007, 2012; Daughton & Karimabadi 2007; Lyubarsky & Liverts 2008) and three…”