An extreme case of electron shock drift acceleration in low Mach number collisionless shocks is investigated as a plausible mechanism of initial acceleration of relativistic electrons in large-scale shocks in galaxy clusters where upstream plasma tem
perature is of the order of 10 keV and a degree of magnetization is not too small. One-dimensional electromagnetic full particle simulations reveal that, even though a shock is rather moderate, a part of thermal incoming electrons are accelerated and reflected through relativistic shock drift acceleration and form a local nonthermal population just upstream of the shock. The accelerated electrons can self-generate local coherent waves and further be back-scattered toward the shock by those waves. This may be a scenario for the first stage of the electron shock acceleration occurring at the large-scale shocks in galaxy clusters such as CIZA J2242.8+5301 which has well defined radio relics.
A new particle acceleration process in a developing Alfv{e}n turbulence in the course of successive parametric instabilities of a relativistic pair plasma is investigated by utilyzing one-dimensional electromagnetic full particle code. Coherent wave-
particle interactions result in efficient particle acceleration leading to a power-law like energy distribution function. In the simulation high energy particles having large relativistic masses are preferentially accelerated as the turbulence spectrum evolves in time. Main acceleration mechanism is simultaneous relativistic resonance between a particle and two different waves. An analytical expression of maximum attainable energy in such wave-particle interactions is derived.
