Richtmyer-Meshkov Type Instability of a Current Sheet in a Relativistically Magnetized Plasma

Abstract

Linear stability of a current sheet that is subject to an impulsive acceleration due to a shock passage is studied with the effect of guide magnetic field. We find that the current sheet embedded in relativistically magnetized plasma always shows a Richtmyer-Meshkov type instability, while it depends on the density structure in the Newtonian limit. The growth of the instability is expected to generate turbulence around the current sheet that can induce so-called turbulent reconnection whose rate is essentially free from plasma resistivity. Thus, the instability can be applied as a triggering mechanism of rapid magnetic energy release in variety of high-energy astrophysical phenomena such as pulsar wind nebulae, gamma-ray bursts, and active galactic nuclei, where the shock wave is supposed to play a crucial role.

5 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

References in corpus (4)

• The Internal-Collision-Induced Magnetic Reconnection and Turbulence (ICMART) Model of Gamma-Ray Bursts
• Fast TeV variability in blazars: jets in a jet
• Numerical Tests of Fast Reconnection in Weakly Stochastic Magnetic Fields
• Enhanced Dissipation Rate of Magnetic Field in Striped Pulsar Winds by the Effect of Turbulence

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Origin of Radially Aligned Magnetic Fields in Young Supernova Remnants
• Critical Magnetic Field Strength for Suppression of the Richtmyer-Meshkov Instability in Plasmas
• Magnetic Field Amplification and Saturation in Turbulence Behind a Relativistic Shock
• Orbital evolution of colliding star and pulsar winds in 2D and 3D; effects of: dimensionality, EoS, resolution, and grid size
• Turbulent Reconnection in Relativistic Plasmas And Effects of Compressibility
• Evolution of the Relativistic Plasmoid-Chain in the Poynting-Dominated Plasma
• Crab flares due to turbulent dissipation of the pulsar striped wind