Conveners
Particle Acceleration
- Lukasz Stawarz (Astronomical Observatory of the Jagiellonian University)
Shock waves in cosmic plasma are generally considered as most appropriate candidates for the role of particle accelerators, being the possible sources of relativistic electrons responsible for the non-thermal electromagnetic radiation (radio, X-rays, gamma) as well as cosmic rays (CR). They can be found in numerous astrophysical objects widely varying in scales, from Earth’s bow shock and...
Jets in active galactic nuclei (AGN) are known for their intense X-ray and gamma-ray emission, originating from non-thermal particles. These sources are also linked to high-energy neutrino events and are considered potential sites of ultra-high-energy cosmic ray production. Accelerated particles can be generated in shock waves formed in collisionless AGN plasmas. We report on our recent...
Astrophysical magnetic fields may store significant amounts of energy. The process of magnetic reconnection can release this energy fairly rapidly and transfer it directly to particles. In the relativistic regime, when magnetic energy density dominates the rest-mass plasma density, most of participating particles can achieve relativistic energies. Relativistic reconnection is a complex process...
The applicability of first-order Fermi acceleration in explaining the cosmic ray spectrum has been reexamined using recent results on shock acceleration mechanisms from the Multiscale Magnetospheric mission in Earth's bow shock. It is demonstrated that the Fermi mechanism is a crude approximation of the ballistic surfing acceleration (BSA) mechanism. While both mechanisms yield similar...
Recent progress in understanding the physics of radio pulsars
Radio pulsars, discovered 57 years ago, remain one of the profound puzzles of
the modern astrophysics, as we still lack self-consistent quantitative models of
emission processes in pulsar magnetospheres. However, the advent of powerful
computers and significant improvements in numerical techniques for modeling
relativistic...
