Radiative Magnetic Reconnection in Astrophysics

Abstract

I review a new rapidly growing area of high-energy plasma astrophysics --- radiative magnetic reconnection, i.e., a reconnection regime where radiation reaction influences reconnection dynamics, energetics, and nonthermal particle acceleration. This influence be may be manifested via a number of astrophysically important radiative effects, such as radiation-reaction limits on particle acceleration, radiative cooling, radiative resistivity, braking of reconnection outflows by radiation drag, radiation pressure, viscosity, and even pair creation at highest energy densities. Self-consistent inclusion of these effects in magnetic reconnection theory and modeling calls for serious modifications to our overall theoretical approach to the problem. In addition, prompt reconnection-powered radiation often represents our only observational diagnostic tool for studying remote astrophysical systems; this underscores the importance of developing predictive modeling capabilities to connect the underlying physical conditions in a reconnecting system to observable radiative signatures. This Chapter gives an overview of recent theoretical progress in developing basic physical understanding of radiative reconnection, with a special emphasis on astrophysically important radiation mechanisms like synchrotron, curvature, and inverse-Compton. It also offers a broad review of key high-energy astrophysical applications of radiative reconnection, such as: pulsar wind nebulae and magnetospheres, accreting black-hole coronae and jets in XRBs and AGN, magnetospheres of magnetars, and Gamma-Ray Bursts. Finally, this Chapter discusses the most critical open questions and outlines the directions for future research in this exciting new frontier of plasma astrophysics.

Invited chapter to appear in "Magnetic Reconnection: Concepts and Applications", Springer-Verlag, W. D. Gonzalez and E. N. Parker, eds. (2016); 44 pages

References in corpus (31)

• X-ray Properties of Black-Hole Binaries
• Instability of current sheets and formation of plasmoid chains
• Relativistic Reconnection: an Efficient Source of Non-Thermal Particles
• Fast TeV variability in blazars: jets in a jet
• Formation of Hard Power-laws in the Energetic Particle Spectra Resulting from Relativistic Magnetic Reconnection
• Numerical Tests of Fast Reconnection in Weakly Stochastic Magnetic Fields
• Gamma-ray flares from the Crab Nebula
• Discovery of Powerful Gamma-Ray Flares from the Crab Nebula
• Numerical simulations of super-critical black hole accretion flows in general relativity
• The Generation of Nonthermal Particles in the Relativistic Magnetic Reconnection of Pair Plasmas
• Three-Dimensional General Relativistic Radiation Magnetohydrodynamical Simulation of Super-Eddington Accretion, using a new code HARMRAD with M1 Closure
• The extent of power-law energy spectra in collisionless relativistic magnetic reconnection in pair plasmas
• Ab-initio pulsar magnetosphere: three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations of oblique pulsars
• The role of kink instability in Poynting-flux dominated jets
• Particle acceleration in axisymmetric pulsar current sheets
• Ab-initio pulsar magnetosphere: three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations of axisymmetric pulsars
• Spectral and timing properties of a dissipative GRB photosphere
• Fast magnetic reconnection in the solar chromosphere mediated by the plasmoid instability
• The Role of the Guide Field in Relativistic Pair Plasma Reconnection
• Three-dimensional relativistic pair plasma reconnection with radiative feedback in the Crab Nebula
• Plasma Physics of Extreme Astrophysical Environments
• Particle acceleration in the driven relativistic reconnection
• Gamma-ray flares in the Crab Nebula: A case of relativistic reconnection?
• On the distribution of particle acceleration sites in plasmoid-dominated relativistic magnetic reconnection
• Reconnection in Marginally Collisionless Accretion Disk Coronae
• The role of fast magnetic reconnection on the radio and gamma-ray emission from the nuclear regions of microquasars and low luminosity AGNs
• The energetics of relativistic magnetic reconnection: ion-electron repartition and particle distribution hardness
• On the role of fast magnetic reconnection in accreting black hole sources
• A magnetic reconnection model for explaining the multi-wavelength emission of the microquasars Cyg X-1 and Cyg X-3
• The role of reconnection in the pulsar magnetosphere
• A statistical model for the $\gamma$-ray variability of the Crab nebula

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Radiative magnetic reconnection near accreting black holes
• Magnetoluminescence
• Radiation reaction of charged particles orbiting magnetized Schwarzschild black hole
• Kinetic study of radiation-reaction-limited particle acceleration during the relaxation of unstable force-free equilibria
• Turbulent magnetic relaxation in pulsar wind nebulae
• Testing the disk-corona interplay in radiatively-efficient broad-line AGN
• Kinetic Beaming in Radiative Relativistic Magnetic Reconnection: A Mechanism for Rapid Gamma-Ray Flares in Jets
• Relativistic Nonthermal Particle Acceleration in Two-Dimensional Collisionless Magnetic Reconnection
• Synchrotron Pair Production Equilibrium in Relativistic Magnetic Reconnection