While a growing body of research indicates that relativistic magnetic reconnection is a prodigious source of particle acceleration in high-energy astrophysical systems, the dominant acceleration mechanism remains controversial. Using a combination of fully kinetic simulations and theoretical analysis, we demonstrate that Fermi-type acceleration within the large-scale motional electric fields dominates over direct acceleration from non-ideal electric fields within small-scale diffusion regions. This result has profound implications for modeling particle acceleration in large-scale astrophysical problems, as it opens up the possibility of modeling the energetic spectra without resolving microscopic diffusion regions.
CITATION STYLE
Guo, F., Li, X., Daughton, W., Kilian, P., Li, H., Liu, Y.-H., … Ma, D. (2019). Determining the Dominant Acceleration Mechanism during Relativistic Magnetic Reconnection in Large-scale Systems. The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 879(2), L23. https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ab2a15
Mendeley helps you to discover research relevant for your work.