Plasmoid statistics in relativistic magnetic reconnection

Abstract

Plasmoids, quasi-spherical regions of plasma containing magnetic fields and high-energy particles, are a self-consistent by-product of the reconnection process in the relativistic regime. Recent two-dimensional particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations have shown that plasmoids can undergo a variety of processes (e.g. mergers, bulk acceleration, growth, and advection) within the reconnection layer. We developed a Monte Carlo (MC) 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, $N(w)\propto w^{-\chi }$, ranging from a few plasma skin depths to $\sim 0.1$ of the reconnection layer's length. We demonstrate numerically and analytically that the power law slope $\chi$ is linearly dependent upon the ratio of the plasmoid acceleration and growth rates and that it slightly decreases (from $\sim 2$ to $\sim 1.3$) with increasing plasma magnetization (from 3 to 50). 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.

18 pages, 19 figures, submitted to MNRAS

References in corpus (13)

• Instability of current sheets and formation of plasmoid chains
• Fast TeV variability in blazars: jets in a jet
• Formation of Hard Power-laws in the Energetic Particle Spectra Resulting from Relativistic Magnetic Reconnection
• Relativistic Jets Shine through Shocks or Magnetic Reconnection?
• Prompt GRB emission from gradual energy dissipation
• Rapid Variability of Blazar 3C 279 during Flaring States in 2013-2014 with Joint Fermi-LAT, NuSTAR, Swift, and Ground-Based Multi-wavelength Observations
• Dos and don'ts of reduced chi-squared
• Blazar flares powered by plasmoids in relativistic reconnection
• General Theory of the Plasmoid Instability
• Gamma Ray Bursts as Electromagnetic Outflows
• On the Distribution of Plasmoids In High-Lundquist-Number Magnetic Reconnection
• Helical Kink Instability in a Confined Solar Eruption
• Ground-based Gamma Ray Astronomy

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Magnetic reconnection in the era of exascale computing and multiscale experiments
• Radiation Signatures From Striped Blazar Jet
• The optical behaviour of BL Lacertae at its maximum brightness levels: a blend of geometry and energetics
• Variability Signatures of a Burst Process in Flaring Gamma-ray Blazars