397 research outputs found
Particle-in-cell simulations of shock-driven reconnection in relativistic striped winds
By means of two- and three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations, we
investigate the process of driven magnetic reconnection at the termination
shock of relativistic striped flows. In pulsar winds and in magnetar-powered
relativistic jets, the flow consists of stripes of alternating magnetic field
polarity, separated by current sheets of hot plasma. At the wind termination
shock, the flow compresses and the alternating fields annihilate by driven
magnetic reconnection. Irrespective of the stripe wavelength "lambda" or the
wind magnetization "sigma" (in the regime sigma>>1 of magnetically-dominated
flows), shock-driven reconnection transfers all the magnetic energy of
alternating fields to the particles, whose average Lorentz factor increases by
a factor of sigma with respect to the pre-shock value. In the limit
lambda/(r_L*sigma)>>1, where r_L is the relativistic Larmor radius in the wind,
the post-shock particle spectrum approaches a flat power-law tail with slope
around -1.5, populated by particles accelerated by the reconnection electric
field. The presence of a current-aligned "guide" magnetic field suppresses the
acceleration of particles only when the guide field is stronger than the
alternating component. Our findings place important constraints on the models
of non-thermal radiation from Pulsar Wind Nebulae and relativistic jets.Comment: 25 pages, 14 figures, movies available at
https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~lsironi/sironi_movies.tar ; in press, special
issue of Computational Science and Discovery on selected research from the
22nd International Conference on Numerical Simulation of Plasma
Separation of the Galactic Synchrotron Foreground and the CMB Polarization Measurements
The polarization of the CMBR represents a powerful test for modern cosmology.
It allows to break the degeneracy of fundamental cosmological parameters, and
also to observe the contribution of gravitational waves background to the CMBR
anisotropy. To observe the CMBR polarization several experiments are either in
progress or planned and SPOrt is one of the most promising planned by ESA. At
the same time the observation of the CMBR polarization is a difficult task and
one of the reasons is the presence of polarized foreground emission. For
instance, galactic polarized synchrotron emission (according to some estimates)
can completely mimic the polarization of the CMBR. Nevertheless, one can use
mathematical properties of the spherical harmonics of the distribution of
radiation over the sky to separate different contributions. In this paper the
mathematical properties of the polarized synchrotron foreground and the
physical mechanism that produces it are discussed. The separation of
synchrotron polarization from the polarization generated by density
cosmological perturbations is discussed as well.Comment: 10 LaTeX pages, acceptted to AIP Conference Proceedin
Acceleration in perpendicular relativistic shocks for plasmas consisting of leptons and hadrons
We investigate the acceleration of light particles in perpendicular shocks
for plasmas consisting of a mixture of leptonic and hadronic particles.
Starting from the full set of conservation equations for the mixed plasma
constituents, we generalize the magneto-hydrodynamical jump conditions for a
multi-component plasma, including information about the specific adiabatic
constants for the different species. The impact of deviations from the standard
model of an ideal gas is compared in theory and particle-in-cell simulations,
showing that the standard-MHD model is a good approximation. The simulations of
shocks in electron-positron-ion plasmas are for the first time
multi-dimensional, transverse effects are small in this configuration and 1D
simulations are a good representation if the initial magnetization is chosen
high. 1D runs with a mass ratio of 1836 are performed, which identify the
Larmor frequency \omega_{ci} as the dominant frequency that determines the
shock physics in mixed component plasmas. The maximum energy in the non-thermal
tail of the particle spectra evolves in time according to a power-law
proportional to t^\alpha with \alpha in the range 1/3 < \alpha < 1, depending
on the initial parameters. A connection is made with transport theoretical
models by Drury (1983) and Gargate & Spitkovsky (2011), which predict an
acceleration time proportional to \gamma and the theory for small wavelength
scattering by Kirk & Reville (2010), which predicts a behavior rather as
proportional to \gamma^2. Furthermore, we compare different magnetic field
orientations with B_0 inside and out of the plane, observing qualitatively
different particle spectra than in pure electron-ion shocks
Relativistic resistive magnetohydrodynamic reconnection and plasmoid formation in merging flux tubes
Particle acceleration in explosive relativistic reconnection events and Crab Nebula gamma-ray flares
We develop a model of gamma-ray flares of the Crab Nebula resulting from the magnetic reconnection events in a highly magnetised relativistic plasma. We first discuss physical parameters of the Crab Nebula and review the theory of pulsar winds and termination shocks. We also review the principle points of particle acceleration in explosive reconnection events [Lyutikov et al., J. Plasma Phys., vol. 83(6), p. 635830601 (2017a); J. Plasma Phys., vol. 83(6), p. 635830602 (2017b)]. It is required that particles producing flares are accelerated in highly magnetised regions of the nebula. Flares originate from the poleward regions at the base of the Crab’s polar outflow, where both the magnetisation and the magnetic field strength are sufficiently high. The post-termination shock flow develops macroscopic (not related to the plasma properties on the skin-depth scale) kink-type instabilities. The resulting large-scale magnetic stresses drive explosive reconnection events on the light-crossing time of the reconnection region. Flares are produced at the initial stage of the current sheet development, during the X-point collapse. The model has all the ingredients needed for Crab flares: natural formation of highly magnetised regions, explosive dynamics on the light travel time, development of high electric fields on macroscopic scales and acceleration of particles to energies well exceeding the average magnetic energy per particle
Sex-biased parasitism in vector-borne disease: Vector preference?
Sex-biased infections are a recurrent observation in vertebrates. In many species, males are more parasitized than females. Two potentially complementary mechanisms are often suggested to explain this pattern: sexual differences in susceptibility mainly caused by the effect of sex hormones on immunity and differential exposure to parasites. Exposure is mostly a consequence of host behavioural traits, but vector-borne parasitic infections involve another degree of complexity due to the active role of vectors in transmission. Blood-sucking insects may make choices based on cues produced by hosts. Regarding malaria, several studies highlighted a male-biased infection by Plasmodium sp in great tits (Parus major). We hypothesize that the mosquito vector, Culex pipiens, might at least partially cause this bias by being more attracted to male birds. Intrinsic variation associated to bird sex would explain a preference of mosquitoes for males. To test this hypothesis, we provide uninfected mosquitoes with a choice between uninfected male and female nestlings. Mosquito choice is assessed by sex typing of the ingested blood. We did not observe any preference for a given sex. This result does not support our prediction of a preference of mosquitoes for male great tits during the nestling period. In conclusion, mosquitoes do not seem to have an intrinsic preference for male nestlings. However, sexually divergent traits (e.g. behaviour, odour, metabolic rate) present in adults may play a role in the attraction of mosquitoes and should be investigated
Synchrotron Polarization Signatures of Surface Waves in Supermassive Black Hole Jets
Supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei are known to launch relativistic jets, which are observed across the entire electromagnetic spectrum and thought to be efficient particle accelerators. Their primary radiation mechanism for radio emission is polarized synchrotron emission produced by a population of nonthermal electrons. In this Letter, we present a global general relativistic magnetohydrodynamical (GRMHD) simulation of a magnetically arrested disk (MAD). After the simulation reaches the MAD state, we show that waves are continuously launched from the vicinity of the black hole and propagate along the interface between the jet and the wind. At this interface, a steep gradient in velocity is present between the mildly relativistic wind and the highly relativistic jet. The interface is, therefore, a shear layer, and due to the shear, the waves generate roll-ups that alter the magnetic field configuration and the shear layer geometry. We then perform polarized radiation transfer calculations of our GRMHD simulation and find signatures of the waves in both total intensity and linear polarization, effectively lowering the fully resolved polarization fraction. The telltale polarization signatures of the waves could be observable by future very long baseline interferometric observations, e.g., the next-generation Event Horizon Telescope
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