Speaker
Description
Space and Astrophysical plasmas such as the solar corona, pulsar magnetospheres and winds, act as efficient particle accelerators, with magnetic reconnection, turbulence and shocks, often operating in concert.
In this work we address the microphysics of a multiple current sheet reconnection and particle acceleration, by following turbulence development in a relativistic astrophysical framework. We perform 2D PIC simulations of a pair plasma, including synchrotron cooling and emission.
After an initial phase of reconnection, plasmoids from neighboring sheets merge, driving the formation of new current layers and triggering a transition to a turbulent regime. Energy cascades across a hierarchy of spatial scales with a Kolmogorov-like spectrum, reaching the dissipation range where particles undergo secondary energization and strong synchrotron cooling, produce intermittent radiative bursts.
This result is particularly relevant to pulsar striped winds, physically motivating injection conditions for models of further acceleration at the pulsar wind termination shock.
