3,394 research outputs found
Relativistic Particle Acceleration in a Folded Current Sheet
Two-dimensional particle simulations of a relativistic Harris current sheet
of pair plasmashave demonstrated that the system is unstable to the
relativistic drift kink instability (RDKI) and that a new kind of acceleration
process takes place in the deformed current sheet. This process contributes to
the generation of non-thermal particles and contributes to the fast magnetic
dissipation in the current sheet structure. The acceleration mechanism and a
brief comparison with relativistic magnetic reconnection are presented.Comment: 11 preprint pages, including 3 .eps figure
Particle Acceleration and Magnetic Dissipation in Relativistic Current Sheet of Pair Plasmas
We study linear and nonlinear development of relativistic and
ultrarelativistic current sheets of pair 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 an order of the light speed c. It
is demonstrated that particles are strongly accelerated in and around the
reconnection region, and that most of magnetic energy is converted into
"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 fast 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 > mc^2, as long as we
consider the kinetics. Comparison of the two processes indicates that magnetic
dissipation by the RDKI is more favorable process in the relativistic current
sheet. Therefore the striped pulsar wind scenario should be reconsidered by the
RDKI.Comment: To appear in ApJ vol. 670; 60 pages, 27 figures; References and typos
are fixe
Particle Acceleration in three dimensional Reconnection Regions: A New Test Particle Approach
Magnetic Reconnection is an efficient and fast acceleration mechanism by
means of direct electric field acceleration parallel to the magnetic field.
Thus, acceleration of particles in reconnection regions is a very important
topic in plasma astrophysics. This paper shows that the conventional analytical
models and numerical test particle investigations can be misleading concerning
the energy distribution of the accelerated particles, since they oversimplify
the electric field structure by the assumption that the field is homogeneous.
These investigations of the acceleration of charged test particles are extended
by considering three-dimensional field configurations characterized by
localized field-aligned electric fields. Moreover, effects of radiative losses
are discussed. The comparison between homogeneous and inhomogeneous electric
field acceleration in reconnection regions shows dramatic differences
concerning both, the maximum particle energy and the form of the energy
distribution.Comment: 11 pages, 21 figure
Dissipation in Poynting-flux Dominated Flows: the Sigma-Problem of the Crab Pulsar Wind
Flows in which energy is transported predominantly as Poynting flux are
thought to occur in pulsars, gamma-ray bursts and relativistic jets from
compact objects. The fluctuating component of the magnetic field in such a flow
can in principle be dissipated by magnetic reconnection, and used to accelerate
the flow. We investigate how rapidly this transition can take place, by
implementing into a global MHD model, that uses a thermodynamic description of
the plasma, explicit, physically motivated prescriptions for the dissipation
rate: a lower limit on this rate is given by limiting the maximum drift speed
of the current carriers to that of light, an upper limit follows from demanding
that the dissipation zone expand only subsonically in the comoving frame and a
further prescription is obtained by assuming that the expansion speed is
limited by the growth rate of the relativistic tearing mode. In each case,
solutions are presented which give the Lorentz factor of a spherical wind
containing a transverse, oscillating magnetic field component as a function of
radius. In the case of the Crab pulsar, we find that the Poynting flux can be
dissipated before the wind reaches the inner edge of the Nebula if the pulsar
emits electron positron pairs at a rate >1.E40 per second, thus providing a
possible solution to the sigma-problem.Comment: Accepted for publication in Ap
Are T Tauri stars gamma-ray emitters?
T Tauri stars are young, low mass, pre-main sequence stars surrounded by an
accretion disk. These objects present strong magnetic activity and powerful
magnetic reconnection events. Strong shocks are likely associated with fast
reconnection in the stellar magnetosphere. Such shocks can accelerate particles
up to relativistic energies. We aim at developing a simple model to calculate
the radiation produced by non-thermal relativistic particles in the environment
of T Tauri stars. We want to establish whether this emission is detectable at
high energies with the available or forthcoming gamma-ray telescopes. We assume
that particles (protons and electrons) pre-accelerated in reconnection events
are accelerated at shocks through Fermi mechanism and we study the high-energy
emission produced by the dominant radiative processes. We calculate the
spectral energy distribution of T Tauri stars up to high-energies and we
compare the integrated flux obtained with that from a specific Fermi source,
1FGL J1625.8-2429c, that we tentatively associate with this kind of young
stellar objects (YSOs). We suggest that under reasonable general conditions
nearby T Tauri stars might be detected at high energies and be responsible for
some unidentified Fermi sources on the Galactic plane.Comment: 7 pages, 10 figure
Comparative Study of Multifragmentation of Gold Nuclei Induced by Relativistic Protons, He, and C
Multiple emission of intermediate-mass fragments has been studied for the
collisions of p, He and C on Au with the setup FASA. The mean
IMF multiplicities (for the events with at least one IMF) are saturating at the
value of for the incident energies above 6 GeV. The observed IMF
multiplicities cannot be described in a two-stage scenario, a fast cascade
followed by a statistical multifragmentation. Agreement with the measured IMF
multiplicities is obtained by introducing an intermediate phase and modifying
empirically the excitation energies and masses of the remnants.
The angular distributions and energy spectra from the p-induced collisions
are in agreement with the scenario of ``thermal'' multifragmentation of a hot
and diluted target spectator. In the case of C+Au(22.4 GeV) and
He(14.6 GeV)+Au collisions, deviations from a pure thermal break-up are
seen in the energy spectra of the emitted fragments, which are harder than
those both from model calculations and from the measured ones for p-induced
collisions. This difference is attributed to a collective flow.Comment: 33 pages 15 figures, accepted in Nucl. Phys.
Test of CPT Symmetry and Quantum Mechanics with Experimental data from CPLEAR
We use fits to recent published CPLEAR data on neutral kaon decays to
and to constrain the CPT--violation parameters
appearing in a formulation of the neutral kaon system as an open
quantum-mechanical system. The obtained upper limits of the CPT--violation
parameters are approaching the range suggested by certain ideas concerning
quantum gravity.Comment: 9 pages of uuencoded postscript (includes 3 figures
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