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Register a new userPhysics and phenomenology of weakly magnetized, relativistic astrophysical shock waves
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A. Vanthieghem
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Weakly magnetized, relativistic collisionless shock waves are not only the natural offsprings of relativistic jets in high-energy astrophysical sources, they are also associated with some of the most outstanding displays of energy dissipation through particle acceleration and radiation. Perhaps their most peculiar and exciting feature is that the magnetized turbulence that sustains the acceleration process, and (possibly) the secondary radiation itself, is self-excited by the accelerated particles themselves, so that the phenomenology of these shock waves hinges strongly on the microphysics of the shock. In this review, we draw a status report of this microphysics, benchmarking analytical arguments with particle-in-cell simulations, and extract consequences of direct interest to the phenomenology, regarding in particular the so-called microphysical parameters used in phenomenological studies.
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As a shock front interacts with turbulence, it develops corrugation which induces outgoing wave modes in the downstream plasma. For a fast shock wave, the incoming wave modes can either be fast magnetosonic waves originating from downstream, outrunning the shock, or eigenmodes of the upstream plasma drifting through the shock. Using linear perturbation theory in relativistic MHD, this paper provides a general analysis of the corrugation of relativistic magnetized fast shock waves resulting from their interaction with small amplitude disturbances. Transfer functions characterizing the linear response for each of the outgoing modes are calculated as a function of the magnetization of the upstream medium and as a function of the nature of the incoming wave. Interestingly, if the latter is an eigenmode of the upstream plasma, we find that there exists a resonance at which the (linear) response of the shock becomes large or even diverges. This result may have profound consequences on the phenomenology of astrophysical relativistic magnetized shock waves.
We use high--quality, multi-band observations of Swift GRB120404A, from gamma-ray to radio frequencies, together with the new hydrodynamics code of van Eerten et al. (2012) to test the standard synchrotron shock model. The evolution of the radio and optical afterglow, with its prominent optical rebrightening at t_rest 260-2600 s, is remarkably well modelled by a decelerating jet viewed close to the jet edge, combined with some early re-energization of the shock. We thus constrain the geometry of the jet with half-opening and viewing angles of 23 and 21 deg respectively and suggest that wide jets viewed off-axis are more common in GRBs than previously thought. We also derive the fireball microphysics parameters epsilon_B=2.4e-4 and epsilon_e=9.3e-2 and a circumburst density of n=240 cm^-3. The ability to self-consistently model the microphysics parameters and jet geometry in this way offers an alternative to trying to identify elusive canonical jet breaks at late times. The mismatch between the observed and model-predicted X-ray fluxes is explained by the local rather than the global cooling approximation in the synchrotron radiation model, constraining the microphysics of particle acceleration taking place in a relativistic shock and, in turn, emphasising the need for a more realistic treatment of cooling in future developments of theoretical models. Finally, our interpretation of the optical peak as due to the passage of the forward shock synchrotron frequency highlights the importance of high quality multi-band data to prevent some optical peaks from being erroneously attributed to the onset of fireball deceleration.
The internal shocks scenario in relativistic jets is used to explain the variability of the blazar emission. Recent studies have shown that the magnetic field significantly alters the shell collision dynamics, producing a variety of spectral energy distributions and light-curves patterns. However, the role played by magnetization in such emission processes is still not entirely understood. In this work we numerically solve the magnetohydodynamic evolution of the magnetized shells collision, and determine the influence of the magnetization on the observed radiation. Our procedure consists in systematically varying the shell Lorentz factor, relative velocity, and viewing angle. The calculations needed to produce the whole broadband spectral energy distributions and light-curves are computationally expensive, and are achieved using a high-performance parallel code.
Mildly relativistic shocks in magnetized electron-ion plasmas are investigated with 2D kinetic particle-in-cell simulations of unprecedentedly high resolution and large scale for conditions that may be found at internal shocks in blazar cores. Ion-scale effects cause corrugations along the shock surface whose properties somewhat depend on the configuration of the mean perpendicular magnetic field, that is either in or out of the simulation plane. We show that the synchrotron maser instability persists to operate in mildly relativistic shocks in agreement with theoretical predictions and produces coherent emission of upstream-propagating electromagnetic waves. Shock front ripples are excited in both mean-field configurations and they engender effective wave amplification. The interaction of these waves with upstream plasma generates electrostatic wakefields.
Energetic electromagnetic emissions by astrophysical jets like those that are launched during the collapse of a massive star and trigger gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are partially attributed to relativistic internal shocks. The shocks are mediated in the collisionless plasma of such jets by the filamentation instability of counterstreaming particle beams. The filamentation instability grows fastest only if the beams move at a relativistic relative speed. We model here with a particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation the collision of two cold pair clouds at the speed c/2 (c: speed of light). We demonstrate that the two-stream instability outgrows the filamentation instability for this speed and is thus responsible for the shock formation. The incomplete thermalization of the upstream plasma by its quasi-electrostatic waves allows other instabilities to grow. A shock transition layer forms, in which a filamentation instability modulates the plasma far upstream of the shock. The inflowing upstream plasma is progressively heated by a two-stream instability closer to the shock and compressed to the expected downstream density by the Weibel instability. The strong magnetic field due to the latter is confined to a layer 10 electron skin depths wide.
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