7 papers
Electromagnetic Precursors to Binary Neutron Star Mergers: Kinetic Simulations of Magnetospheric Flaring
Jasmine Parsons, Anatoly Spitkovsky, Alexander Philippov +1
We present the first 3D global kinetic simulations of the interacting magnetospheres of pre-merger binary neutron stars. The stars, whose magnetic moments are anti-aligned, twist t…
Reconnection-driven Flares in M87*: Proton-Synchrotron-powered GeV Emission
Hayk Hakobyan, Amir Levinson, Lorenzo Sironi +2
Magnetic reconnection in current layers that form intermittently in radiatively inefficient accretion flows onto black holes is a promising mechanism for particle acceleration and…
Entity -- Hardware-agnostic Particle-in-Cell Code for Plasma Astrophysics. I: Curvilinear Special Relativistic Module
Hayk Hakobyan, Ludwig M. Böss, Yangyang Cai +8
Entity is a new-generation, fully open-source particle-in-cell (PIC) code developed to overcome key limitations in astrophysical plasma modeling, particularly the extreme separatio…
-- Hardware-agnostic Particle-in-Cell Code for Plasma Astrophysics. II: General Relativistic Module
Alisa Galishnikova, Hayk Hakobyan, Alexander Philippov +1
Black hole environments often host plasmas that are fully collisionless or contain intrinsically collisionless regions, including relativistic jets and coronae where particle energ…
Plasma Instabilities Dominate Radioactive Transients Magnetic Fields: The self-confinement of leptons in Type Ia and Core-Collapse Supernovae, and Kilonovae
Dhvanil D. Desai, Colby C. Haggerty, Benjamin J. Shappee +8
The light curves of radioactive transients, such as supernovae and kilonovae, are powered by the decay of radioisotopes, which release high-energy leptons through $β^+$ and $β^-$…
Kinetic simulations of the Kruskal-Schwarzchild instability in accelerating striped outflows I: Dynamics and energy dissipation
William Groger, Hayk Hakobyan, Lorenzo Sironi
Astrophysical relativistic outflows are launched as Poynting-flux-dominated, yet the mechanism governing efficient magnetic dissipation, which powers the observed emission, is stil…