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Relativistic Magnetic Reconnection in Pair Plasmas and Its Astrophysical Applications

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Abstract

This review discusses the physics of magnetic reconnection—a process in which the magnetic field topology changes and magnetic energy is converted to kinetic energy—in pair plasmas in the relativistic regime. We focus on recent progress in the field driven by theory advances and the maturity of particle-in-cell codes. This work shows that fragmentation instabilities at the current sheet can play a critical role in setting the reconnection speed and affect the resulting particle acceleration, anisotropy, bulk flows, and radiation. Then, we discuss how this novel understanding of relativistic reconnection can be applied to high-energy astrophysical phenomena, with an emphasis on pulsars, pulsar wind nebulae, and active galactic nucleus jets.

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Notes

  1. If w n ≫1 but σ<1, the plasma is initially relativistic but reconnection is typically weak, so the relativistic reconnection discussed in this review typically fulfills condition (1).

  2. The presence of a strong guide field orthogonal to the reconnecting plane guarantees that the 3D physics will resemble the 2D results, see Guo et al. (2014).

  3. Particle acceleration in magnetic islands (as opposed to X-lines or X-points) is also widely discussed in the literature, both in non-relativistic reconnection (e.g., Drake et al. 2006; Oka et al. 2010)—where the particles are adiabatic, and they bounce several times between the two edges of an island—and relativistic reconnection (Liu et al. 2011; Guo et al. 2014), where the energy gain might come just from a single bounce. However, the inflowing particles interact at first with the X-points, where they get energy from the dissipating fields. It is this first acceleration episode (that we describe below) which will establish the spectral slope and strongly affect the future history of the inflowing particles. In fact, particles accelerated to high energies at the X-point are likely to experience further acceleration via reflection off of moving magnetic disturbances (e.g., in contracting islands or in between two merging islands), which might eventually dominate the overall energy gain.

  4. Several hours is the event-horizon light-crossing time of a billion solar-mass black hole—mass typically inferred for the central engine in blazars: t cross=2GM BH/c 3≃104 M 9 s.

  5. Including Mrk 421, Mrk 501, PKS 2155-304, PKS 1222-216, and BL Lac.

  6. In practice the blazar emission is likely to result of ultrarelativistic electrons cooling via synchrotron radiation and Compton scattering. As discussed in previous sections, relativistic reconnection is an effective means of accelerating particles to such extreme energies.

  7. We assume that the plasmoid instability operates across the whole length of the current sheet, as opposed to a situation where central, very compact, dissipation region forms and is surrounded by extended magnetic separatrices (the slow shocks in Petscheck model) across which most of the plasma flows. In the latter case, the monster plasmoids may be smaller.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the referees for useful comments that helped to improve the manuscript. L.S. is supported by NASA through Einstein Postdoctoral Fellowship grant number PF1-120090 awarded by the Chandra X-ray Center, which is operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory for NASA under contract NAS8-03060. B.C. acknowledges support from the Lyman Spitzer Jr. Fellowship awarded by the Department of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University, and the Max-Planck/Princeton Center for Plasma Physics. D.G. acknowledges support from the NASA grant NNX13AP13G.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Racah Institute of Physics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, 91904, Israel

    D. Kagan

  2. Raymond and Beverly Sackler School of Physics and Astronomy, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, 69978, Israel

    D. Kagan

  3. Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA

    L. Sironi

  4. Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08544, USA

    B. Cerutti

  5. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Purdue University, 525 Northwestern Avenue, West Lafayette, IN, 47907, USA

    D. Giannios

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  2. L. Sironi
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  4. D. Giannios
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Correspondence to D. Kagan.

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All authors contributed equally to this review.

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Kagan, D., Sironi, L., Cerutti, B. et al. Relativistic Magnetic Reconnection in Pair Plasmas and Its Astrophysical Applications. Space Sci Rev 191, 545–573 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11214-014-0132-9

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