No Arabic abstract
In highly conducting astrophysical plasmas, charged particles are generically accelerated through Fermi-type processes involving repeated interactions with moving magnetized scattering centers. The present paper proposes a generalized description of these acceleration processes, by following the momentum of the particle through a continuous sequence of accelerated frames, defined in such a way that the electric field vanishes at each point along the particle trajectory. In each locally inertial frame, the Lorentz force affects the direction of motion of the particle, but the energy changes solely as a result of inertial corrections. This unified description of Fermi acceleration applies equally well in sub- and ultrarelativistic settings, in Cartesian or non-Cartesian geometries, flat or nonflat space-time. Known results are recovered in a variety of regimes -- shock, turbulent and shear acceleration -- and new results are derived in lieu of applications, e.g. nonresonant acceleration in relativistic turbulence, stochastic unipolar inductive acceleration and centrifugo-shear acceleration close to the horizon of a black hole.
We propose the particle acceleration model coupled with multiple plasmoid ejections in a solar flare. Unsteady reconnection produces plasmoids in a current sheet and ejects them out to the fast shocks, where particles in a plasmoid are reflected upstream the shock front by magnetic mirror effect. As the plasmoid passes through the shock front, the reflection distance becomes shorter and shorter driving Fermi acceleration, until it becomes proton Larmor radius. The fractal distribution of plasmoids may also have a role in naturally explaining the power-law spectrum in nonthermal emissions.
Non-thermal acceleration of particles in magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence plays a central role in a wide variety of astrophysical sites. This physics is addressed here in the context of a strong turbulence, composed of coherent structures rather than waves, beyond the realm of quasilinear theory. The present description tracks the momentum of the particle through a sequence of frames in which the electric field vanishes, in the spirit of the original Fermi scenario. It connects the sources of energy gain (or loss) to the gradients of the velocity of the magnetic field lines, in particular the acceleration and the shear of their velocity flow projected along the field line direction, as well as their compression in the transverse plane. Those velocity gradients are subject to strong intermittency: they are spatially localized and their strengths obey powerlaw distributions, as demonstrated through direct measurements in the incompressible MHD simulation of the Johns Hopkins University database. This intermittency impacts the acceleration process in a significant way, which opens up prospects for a rich phenomenology. In particular, the momentum distribution, which is here captured through an analytical random walk model, displays extended powerlaw tails with soft-to-hard evolution in time, in general agreement with recent kinetic numerical simulations. Extensions to this description and possible avenues of exploration are discussed.
Magnetic reconnection in strongly magnetized astrophysical plasma environments is believed to be the primary process for fast energy release and particle energization. Currently there is strong interest in relativistic magnetic reconnection, in that it may provide a new explanation for high-energy particle acceleration and radiation in strongly magnetized astrophysical systems. We review recent advances in particle acceleration and reconnection physics in the magnetically-dominated regime. More discussion is focused on the physics of particle acceleration, power-law formation as well as the reconnection rate problem. In addition, we provide an outlook for studying reconnection acceleration mechanisms and kinetic physics in the next step.
This paper summarizes recent progresses in our theoretical understanding of particle acceleration at relativistic shock waves and it discusses two salient consequences: (1) the maximal energy of accelerated particles; (2) the impact of the shock-generated micro-turbulence on the multi-wavelength light curves of gamma-ray burst afterglows.
In this paper, we investigate the acceleration in relativistic jets of high-energy proton preaccelerated in the magnetosphere of a supermassive black hole. The proton reaches maximum energy when passing the total potential difference of $U$ between the jet axis and its periphery. This voltage is created by a rotating black hole and transmitted along magnetic field lines into the jet. It is shown that the trajectories of proton in the jet are divided into three groups: untrapped, trapped and not accelerated. Untrapped particles are not kept by poloidal and toroidal magnetic fields inside the jet, so they escape out the jet and their energy is equal to the maximum value, $eU$. Trapped protons are moving along the jet with oscillations in the radial direction. Their energy varies around the value of $0.74 eU$. In a strong magnetic field protons preaccelerated in the magnetosphere are pressed to the jet axis and practically are not accelerated in the jet. The work defines acceleration regimes for a range of the most well-known AGN objects with relativistic jets and for the microquasar SS433.