The steady growth of the high-energy spectral cut-off in relativistic magnetic reconnection
Abstract
Magnetic reconnection is invoked as an efficient particle accelerator in a variety of astrophysical sources of non-thermal high-energy radiation. With large-scale two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations of relativistic reconnection (i.e. with magnetization σ >> 1) in pair plasmas, we study the long-term evolution of the power-law slope and high-energy cut-off of the spectrum of accelerated particles. We find that the high-energy spectral cut-off does not saturate at γcut ~ 4σ, as claimed by earlier studies, but it steadily grows with time as long as the reconnection process stays active. At late times, the cut-off scales approximately as γcut ∝√t, regardless of the flow magnetization and initial temperature. We show that the particles dominating the high-energy spectral cut-off reside in plasmoids, and in particular in a strongly magnetized ring around the plasmoid core. The growth of their energy is driven by the increase in the local field strength, coupled with the conservation of the first adiabatic invariant. We also find that the power-law slope of the spectrum (p = -d log N/d log γ) evolves with time. For σ ≳ 10, the spectrum is hard at early times (p ≲ 2), but it tends to asymptote to p ~ 2; the steepening ofmore »
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC); Columbia Univ., New York, NY (United States)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC)
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1543972
- Grant/Contract Number:
- SC0016542
- Resource Type:
- Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Name:
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
- Additional Journal Information:
- Journal Volume: 481; Journal Issue: 4; Journal ID: ISSN 0035-8711
- Publisher:
- Royal Astronomical Society
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS; Astronomy & Astrophysics
Citation Formats
Petropoulou, Maria, and Sironi, Lorenzo. The steady growth of the high-energy spectral cut-off in relativistic magnetic reconnection. United States: N. p., 2018.
Web. doi:10.1093/mnras/sty2702.
Petropoulou, Maria, & Sironi, Lorenzo. The steady growth of the high-energy spectral cut-off in relativistic magnetic reconnection. United States. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/sty2702
Petropoulou, Maria, and Sironi, Lorenzo. Fri .
"The steady growth of the high-energy spectral cut-off in relativistic magnetic reconnection". United States. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/sty2702. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1543972.
@article{osti_1543972,
title = {The steady growth of the high-energy spectral cut-off in relativistic magnetic reconnection},
author = {Petropoulou, Maria and Sironi, Lorenzo},
abstractNote = {Magnetic reconnection is invoked as an efficient particle accelerator in a variety of astrophysical sources of non-thermal high-energy radiation. With large-scale two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations of relativistic reconnection (i.e. with magnetization σ >> 1) in pair plasmas, we study the long-term evolution of the power-law slope and high-energy cut-off of the spectrum of accelerated particles. We find that the high-energy spectral cut-off does not saturate at γcut ~ 4σ, as claimed by earlier studies, but it steadily grows with time as long as the reconnection process stays active. At late times, the cut-off scales approximately as γcut ∝√t, regardless of the flow magnetization and initial temperature. We show that the particles dominating the high-energy spectral cut-off reside in plasmoids, and in particular in a strongly magnetized ring around the plasmoid core. The growth of their energy is driven by the increase in the local field strength, coupled with the conservation of the first adiabatic invariant. We also find that the power-law slope of the spectrum (p = -d log N/d log γ) evolves with time. For σ ≳ 10, the spectrum is hard at early times (p ≲ 2), but it tends to asymptote to p ~ 2; the steepening of the power-law slope allows the spectral cut-off to extend to higher and higher energies, without violating the fixed energy budget of the system. Our results demonstrate that relativistic reconnection is a viable candidate for accelerating the high-energy particles emitting in relativistic astrophysical sources.},
doi = {10.1093/mnras/sty2702},
journal = {Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society},
number = 4,
volume = 481,
place = {United States},
year = {2018},
month = {10}
}
Free Publicly Available Full Text
Publisher's Version of Record
Other availability
Search WorldCat to find libraries that may hold this journal
Cited by: 14 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science
Web of Science
Figures / Tables:
Table 1: Physical and numerical parameters of the simulations presented in this study.
All figures and tables
(16 total)
Save to My Library
You must Sign In or Create an Account in order to save documents to your library.
Works referenced in this record:
The energetics of relativistic magnetic reconnection: ion-electron repartition and particle distribution hardness
journal, October 2014
- Melzani, Mickaël; Walder, Rolf; Folini, Doris
- Astronomy & Astrophysics, Vol. 570
Fast collisionless reconnection in electron-positron plasmas
journal, May 2007
- Bessho, Naoki; Bhattacharjee, A.
- Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 14, Issue 5
General theory of the plasmoid instability
journal, October 2016
- Comisso, L.; Lingam, M.; Huang, Y. -M.
- Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 23, Issue 10
Photohadronic origin of $\boldsymbol {\gamma }$-ray BL Lac emission: implications for IceCube neutrinos
journal, March 2015
- Petropoulou, M.; Dimitrakoudis, S.; Padovani, P.
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 448, Issue 3
Particle Acceleration in Relativistic Magnetized Collisionless Electron-Ion Shocks
journal, December 2010
- Sironi, Lorenzo; Spitkovsky, Anatoly
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 726, Issue 2
Scaling of Magnetic Reconnection in Relativistic Collisionless Pair Plasmas
journal, March 2015
- Liu, Yi-Hsin; Guo, Fan; Daughton, William
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 114, Issue 9
The power of blazar jets: The power of blazar jets
journal, February 2008
- Celotti, Annalisa; Ghisellini, Gabriele
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 385, Issue 1
Magnetic reconnection at the termination shock in a striped pulsar wind
journal, August 2007
- Pétri, J.; Lyubarsky, Y.
- Astronomy & Astrophysics, Vol. 473, Issue 3
Fast Magnetic Reconnection and Particle Acceleration in Relativistic Low-Density Electron-Positron Plasmas Without Guide Field
journal, April 2012
- Bessho, Naoki; Bhattacharjee, A.
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 750, Issue 2
Electron and Proton Acceleration in Trans-relativistic Magnetic Reconnection: Dependence on Plasma Beta and Magnetization
journal, July 2018
- Ball, David; Sironi, Lorenzo; Özel, Feryal
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 862, Issue 1
Ab Initio Pulsar Magnetosphere: Three-Dimensional Particle-In-Cell Simulations of Axisymmetric Pulsars
journal, April 2014
- Philippov, Alexander A.; Spitkovsky, Anatoly
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 785, Issue 2
A model of gamma-ray bursts
journal, October 1994
- Thompson, Christopher
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 270, Issue 3
The Generation of Nonthermal Particles in the Relativistic Magnetic Reconnection of Pair Plasmas
journal, November 2001
- Zenitani, S.; Hoshino, M.
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 562, Issue 1
Blazar flares powered by plasmoids in relativistic reconnection
journal, July 2016
- Petropoulou, Maria; Giannios, Dimitrios; Sironi, Lorenzo
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 462, Issue 3
On the nature of non-thermal radiation from cosmological -ray bursters
journal, April 1994
- Usov, V. V.
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 267, Issue 4
Dissipation in relativistic pair-plasma reconnection
journal, November 2007
- Hesse, Michael; Zenitani, Seiji
- Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 14, Issue 11
Physics of the saturation of particle acceleration in relativistic magnetic reconnection
journal, February 2018
- Kagan, Daniel; Nakar, Ehud; Piran, Tsvi
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 476, Issue 3
Gamma-Ray Activity in the crab Nebula: the Exceptional Flare of 2011 April
journal, March 2012
- Buehler, R.; Scargle, J. D.; Blandford, R. D.
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 749, Issue 1
Magnetohydrodynamic-Particle-In-Cell Method for Coupling Cosmic rays with a Thermal Plasma: Application to Non-Relativistic Shocks
journal, August 2015
- Bai, Xue-Ning; Caprioli, Damiano; Sironi, Lorenzo
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 809, Issue 1
Efficient acceleration and radiation in Poynting flux powered GRB outflows
journal, August 2002
- Drenkhahn, G.; Spruit, H. C.
- Astronomy & Astrophysics, Vol. 391, Issue 3
Electron acceleration from contracting magnetic islands during reconnection
journal, October 2006
- Drake, J. F.; Swisdak, M.; Che, H.
- Nature, Vol. 443, Issue 7111
Relativistic Reconnection: an Efficient Source of Non-Thermal Particles
journal, February 2014
- Sironi, Lorenzo; Spitkovsky, Anatoly
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 783, Issue 1
Formation of very hard Gamma-Ray Spectra of Blazars in Leptonic Models
journal, September 2011
- Lefa, E.; Rieger, F. M.; Aharonian, F.
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 740, Issue 2
Reconnection-driven plasmoids in blazars: fast flares on a slow envelope
journal, February 2013
- Giannios, Dimitrios
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 431, Issue 1
An Exceptional Very High Energy Gamma-Ray Flare of PKS 2155-304
journal, July 2007
- Aharonian, F.; Akhperjanian, A. G.; Bazer-Bachi, A. R.
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 664, Issue 2
Formation of Hard Power Laws in the Energetic Particle Spectra Resulting from Relativistic Magnetic Reconnection
journal, October 2014
- Guo, Fan; Li, Hui; Daughton, William
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 113, Issue 15
Numerical solution of initial boundary value problems involving maxwell's equations in isotropic media
journal, May 1966
- Kane Yee,
- IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, Vol. 14, Issue 3
Plasmoids in relativistic reconnection, from birth to adulthood: first they grow, then they go
journal, July 2016
- Sironi, Lorenzo; Giannios, Dimitrios; Petropoulou, Maria
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 462, Issue 1
UHECRs from magnetic reconnection in relativistic jets: UHECRs from magnetic reconnection in jets
journal, August 2010
- Giannios, Dimitrios
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters, Vol. 408, Issue 1
Instability of current sheets and formation of plasmoid chains
journal, October 2007
- Loureiro, N. F.; Schekochihin, A. A.; Cowley, S. C.
- Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 14, Issue 10
Very hard gamma-ray emission from a flare of Mrk 501
journal, April 2012
- Neronov, A.; Semikoz, D.; Taylor, A. M.
- Astronomy & Astrophysics, Vol. 541
Fast Magnetic Reconnection in the Plasmoid-Dominated Regime
journal, December 2010
- Uzdensky, D. A.; Loureiro, N. F.; Schekochihin, A. A.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 105, Issue 23
The Role of the Guide Field in Relativistic Pair Plasma Reconnection
journal, April 2008
- Zenitani, S.; Hoshino, M.
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 677, Issue 1
Magnetic Reconnection Onset via Disruption of a Forming Current Sheet by the Tearing Instability
journal, March 2016
- Uzdensky, D. A.; Loureiro, N. F.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 116, Issue 10
Beaming and Rapid Variability of High-Energy Radiation from Relativistic pair Plasma Reconnection
journal, July 2012
- Cerutti, B.; Werner, G. R.; Uzdensky, D. A.
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 754, Issue 2
Prompt GRB emission from gradual energy dissipation
journal, January 2008
- Giannios, D.
- Astronomy & Astrophysics, Vol. 480, Issue 2
Deceleration of a Relativistic, Photon‐rich Shell: End of Preacceleration, Damping of Magnetohydrodynamic Turbulence, and the Emission Mechanism of Gamma‐Ray Bursts
journal, November 2006
- Thompson, Christopher
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 651, Issue 1
On the elimination of numerical Cerenkov radiation in PIC simulations
journal, December 2004
- Greenwood, Andrew D.; Cartwright, Keith L.; Luginsland, John W.
- Journal of Computational Physics, Vol. 201, Issue 2
Reconnection in a Striped Pulsar Wind
journal, January 2001
- Lyubarsky, Y.; Kirk, J. G.
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 547, Issue 1
Particle Acceleration in the Driven Relativistic Reconnection
journal, August 2008
- Lyubarsky, Yuri; Liverts, Michael
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 682, Issue 2
A flux rope Network and Particle Acceleration in Three-Dimensional Relativistic Magnetic Reconnection
journal, August 2013
- Kagan, Daniel; Milosavljević, Miloš; Spitkovsky, Anatoly
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 774, Issue 1
Particle Acceleration and Magnetic Dissipation in Relativistic Current Sheet of Pair Plasmas
journal, November 2007
- Zenitani, S.; Hoshino, M.
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 670, Issue 1
Particle Acceleration and Plasma Dynamics During Magnetic Reconnection in the Magnetically Dominated Regime
journal, June 2015
- Guo, Fan; Liu, Yi-Hsin; Daughton, William
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 806, Issue 2
Relativistic Kinetic Reconnection as the Possible Source Mechanism for High Variability and Flat Spectra in Extragalactic Radio Sources
journal, March 2004
- Jaroschek, C. H.; Lesch, H.; Treumann, R. A.
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 605, Issue 1
The termination shock in a striped pulsar wind
journal, October 2003
- Lyubarsky, Y. E.
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 345, Issue 1
On the Distribution of Particle Acceleration Sites in Plasmoid-Dominated Relativistic Magnetic Reconnection
journal, December 2015
- Nalewajko, Krzysztof; Uzdensky, Dmitri A.; Cerutti, Benoît
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 815, Issue 2
Particle-in-cell simulations of shock-driven reconnection in relativistic striped winds
journal, January 2012
- Sironi, Lorenzo; Spitkovsky, Anatoly
- Computational Science & Discovery, Vol. 5, Issue 1
Acceleration of Particles at the Termination Shock of a Relativistic Striped wind
journal, October 2011
- Sironi, Lorenzo; Spitkovsky, Anatoly
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 741, Issue 1
Dissipation of the striped pulsar wind
journal, November 2017
- Cerutti, B.; Philippov, A. A.
- Astronomy & Astrophysics, Vol. 607
Fast TeV variability from misaligned minijets in the jet of M87
journal, March 2010
- Giannios, Dimitrios; Uzdensky, Dmitri A.; Begelman, Mitchell C.
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 402, Issue 3
Three-Dimensional Evolution of a Relativistic Current Sheet: Triggering of Magnetic Reconnection by the Guide Field
journal, August 2005
- Zenitani, S.; Hoshino, M.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 95, Issue 9
Fast TeV variability in blazars: jets in a jet
journal, May 2009
- Giannios, Dimitrios; Uzdensky, Dmitri A.; Begelman, Mitchell C.
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters, Vol. 395, Issue 1
Dissipation in Poynting‐Flux–dominated Flows: The σ‐Problem of the Crab Pulsar Wind
journal, July 2003
- Kirk, J. G.; Skjaraasen, O.
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 591, Issue 1
Relativistic jets shine through shocks or magnetic reconnection?
journal, April 2015
- Sironi, Lorenzo; Petropoulou, Maria; Giannios, Dimitrios
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 450, Issue 1
Three-Dimensional Relativistic pair Plasma Reconnection with Radiative Feedback in the crab Nebula
journal, February 2014
- Cerutti, B.; Werner, G. R.; Uzdensky, D. A.
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 782, Issue 2
Particle acceleration during magnetic reconnection in a low-beta pair plasma
journal, May 2016
- Guo, Fan; Li, Hui; Daughton, William
- Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 23, Issue 5
Nonthermal Particle Acceleration in 3D Relativistic Magnetic Reconnection in Pair Plasma
journal, July 2017
- Werner, Gregory R.; Uzdensky, Dmitri A.
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 843, Issue 2
Particle acceleration in relativistic magnetic flux-merging events
journal, December 2017
- Lyutikov, Maxim; Sironi, Lorenzo; Komissarov, Serguei S.
- Journal of Plasma Physics, Vol. 83, Issue 6
Electron and Proton Heating in Transrelativistic Magnetic Reconnection
journal, November 2017
- Rowan, Michael E.; Sironi, Lorenzo; Narayan, Ramesh
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 850, Issue 1
The Maximum Energy of Accelerated Particles in Relativistic Collisionless Shocks
journal, June 2013
- Sironi, Lorenzo; Spitkovsky, Anatoly; Arons, Jonathan
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 771, Issue 1
Non-thermal particle acceleration in collisionless relativistic electron–proton reconnection
journal, September 2017
- Werner, G. R.; Uzdensky, D. A.; Begelman, M. C.
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 473, Issue 4
The Extent of Power-Law Energy Spectra in Collisionless Relativistic Magnetic Reconnection in pair Plasmas
journal, December 2015
- Werner, G. R.; Uzdensky, D. A.; Cerutti, B.
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 816, Issue 1
Finite-Resistivity Instabilities of a Sheet Pinch
journal, January 1963
- Furth, Harold P.; Killeen, John; Rosenbluth, Marshall N.
- Physics of Fluids, Vol. 6, Issue 4
Computing the reconnection rate in turbulent kinetic layers by using electron mixing to identify topology
journal, May 2014
- Daughton, W.; Nakamura, T. K. M.; Karimabadi, H.
- Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 21, Issue 5
Beaming of Particles and Synchrotron Radiation in Relativistic Magnetic Reconnection
journal, August 2016
- Kagan, Daniel; Nakar, Ehud; Piran, Tsvi
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 826, Issue 2
On the relativistic magnetic reconnection
journal, March 2005
- Lyubarsky, Y. E.
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 358, Issue 1
Particle Acceleration in Relativistic Magnetized Collisionless pair Shocks: Dependence of Shock Acceleration on Magnetic Obliquity
journal, June 2009
- Sironi, Lorenzo; Spitkovsky, Anatoly
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 698, Issue 2
Particle energization in 3D magnetic reconnection of relativistic pair plasmas
journal, May 2011
- Liu, Wei; Li, Hui; Yin, Lin
- Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 18, Issue 5
Large scale magnetic fields and their dissipation in GRB fireballs
journal, April 2001
- Spruit, H. C.; Daigne, F.; Drenkhahn, G.
- Astronomy & Astrophysics, Vol. 369, Issue 2
The Termination Shock in a Striped Pulsar Wind
journal, January 2004
- Lyubarsky, Yury
- Symposium - International Astronomical Union, Vol. 218
Magnetic Reconnection at the Termination Shock of a Striped Pulsar wind
journal, September 2008
- PÉTri, JÉRÔMe; Lyubarsky, Yuri
- International Journal of Modern Physics D, Vol. 17, Issue 10
Works referencing / citing this record:
Effects of Synchrotron Cooling and Pair Production on Collisionless Relativistic Reconnection
journal, May 2019
- Hakobyan, Hayk; Philippov, Alexander; Spitkovsky, Anatoly
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 877, Issue 1
Very-high-energy Emission from Magnetic Reconnection in the Radiative-inefficient Accretion Flow of SgrA*
journal, June 2019
- Rodríguez-Ramírez, Juan Carlos; de Gouveia Dal Pino, Elisabete M.; Alves Batista, Rafael
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 879, Issue 1
Relativistic Magnetic Reconnection in Electron–Positron–Proton Plasmas: Implications for Jets of Active Galactic Nuclei
journal, July 2019
- Petropoulou, Maria; Sironi, Lorenzo; Spitkovsky, Anatoly
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 880, Issue 1
“Double-tracking” Characteristics of the Spectral Evolution of GRB 131231A: Synchrotron Origin?
journal, October 2019
- Li, Liang; Geng, Jin-Jun; Meng, Yan-Zhi
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 884, Issue 2
The Interplay of Magnetically Dominated Turbulence and Magnetic Reconnection in Producing Nonthermal Particles
journal, November 2019
- Comisso, Luca; Sironi, Lorenzo
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 886, Issue 2
Unraveling the Complex Behavior of Mrk 421 with Simultaneous X-Ray and VHE Observations during an Extreme Flaring Activity in 2013 April
journal, June 2020
- Acciari, V. A.; Ansoldi, S.; Antonelli, L. A.
- The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, Vol. 248, Issue 2
Determining the Dominant Acceleration Mechanism during Relativistic Magnetic Reconnection in Large-scale Systems
journal, July 2019
- Guo, Fan; Li, Xiaocan; Daughton, William
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 879, Issue 2
Figures / Tables found in this record:
Figures/Tables have been extracted from DOE-funded journal article accepted manuscripts.