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Title: Plasmoid statistics in relativistic magnetic reconnection

Journal Article · · Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
ORCiD logo [1];  [2];  [3];  [2]
  1. Purdue Univ., West Lafayette, IN (United States); Princeton Univ., NJ (United States)
  2. Purdue Univ., West Lafayette, IN (United States)
  3. Columbia Univ., New York, NY (United States)

Plasmoids, overdense blobs of plasma containing magnetic fields and high-energy particles, are a self-consistent outcome of the reconnection process in the relativistic regime. Recent two-dimensional particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations have shown that plasmoids can sustain a variety of processes (e.g. mergers, bulk acceleration, growth, and advection) within the reconnection layer. We developed a Monte Carlo code, benchmarked with the recent PIC simulations, to examine the effects of these processes on the steady-state size and momentum distributions of the plasmoid chain. The differential plasmoid size distribution is shown to be a power law, ranging from a few plasma skin depths to ~0.1 of the reconnection layer’s length. The power-law slope is shown to be linearly dependent upon the ratio of the plasmoid acceleration and growth rates, which slightly decreases with increasing plasma magnetization. We perform a detailed comparison of our results with those of recent PIC simulations and briefly discuss the astrophysical implications of our findings through the representative case of flaring events from blazar jets.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Fusion Energy Sciences (FES) (SC-24)
Grant/Contract Number:
SC0016542
OSTI ID:
1523832
Journal Information:
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Journal Name: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Journal Issue: 3 Vol. 475; ISSN 0035-8711
Publisher:
Royal Astronomical SocietyCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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Cited By (6)

Radio emission of the Crab and Crab-like pulsars journal November 2018
Radio emission from the Crab and Crab-like pulsars text January 2018
Relativistic Plasmoid Instability in Pair Plasmas journal September 2019
Radiative signatures of plasmoid-dominated reconnection in blazar jets journal October 2018
Interplasmoid Compton scattering and the Compton dominance of BL Lacs journal December 2019
Inter-Plasmoid Compton Scattering and the Compton Dominance of BL Lacs text January 2019