Turbulent reconnection acceleration

Abstract

The ubiquitous turbulence in astrophysical plasmas is important for both magnetic reconnection and reconnection acceleration. We study the particle acceleration during fast 3D turbulent reconnection with reconnection-driven turbulence. Particles bounce back and forth between the reconnection-driven inflows due to the mirror reflection and convergence of strong magnetic fields. Via successive head-on collisions, the kinetic energy of the inflows is converted into the accelerated particles. Turbulence not only regulates the inflow speed but also introduces various inflow obliquities with respect to the local turbulent magnetic fields. As both the energy gain and escape probability of particles depend on the inflow speed, the spectral index of particle energy spectrum is not universal. We find it in the range from $\approx 2.5$ to $4$, with the steepest spectrum expected at a strong guide field, i.e. a small angle between the total incoming magnetic field and the guide field. Without scattering diffusion needed for confining particles, the reconnection acceleration can be very efficient at a large inflow speed and a weak guide field.

16 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

References in corpus (16)

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• Leaking Outside the Box: Kinetic Turbulence with Cosmic-Ray Escape
• Collisionless tearing instability in relativistic non-thermal pair plasma and its application to MHD turbulence
• Spectropolarimetry of synchrotron radiation from relativistic electrons with anisotropic pitch-angle and various energy distributions
• Studying the properties of reconnection-driven turbulence
• On The Nonthermal Power Laws In Magnetized Turbulent Plasmas
• Particle acceleration and pitch-angle evolution in relativistic turbulence
• TeV gamma-ray spectral spikes produced by magnetic reconnection in blazar jets: the case of the 2014 high state of Markarian 501
• Distributions of particles accelerated by strong Alfvénic turbulence