Interaction of the electro-magnetic precursor from a relativistic shock with the upstream flow. I. Synchrotron absorption of strong electromagnetic waves

Abstract

This paper is the first in the series of papers aiming to study interaction of the electro-magnetic precursor waves generated at the front of a relativistic shock with the upstream flow. It is motivated by a simple consideration showing that the absorption of such an electro-magnetic precursor could yield an efficient transformation of the kinetic energy of the upstream flow to the energy of accelerated particles. Taking into account that the precursor is a strong wave, in which electrons oscillate with relativistic velocities, the standard plasma-radiation interaction processes should be reconsidered. In this paper, I calculate the synchrotron absorption of strong electro-magnetic waves.

8 pages, accepted for publication in MNRAS

References in corpus (2)

• Modelling Jets, Tori and Flares in Pulsar Wind Nebulae
• Electron acceleration at pulsar wind termination shocks

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Particle Acceleration by Pickup Process Upstream of Relativistic Shocks
• Emission Mechanisms of Fast Radio Bursts
• Filamentation of the electromagnetic precursor in relativistic quasi-perpendicular electron-positron shocks