2003/10/14 by Mikhail V. Medvedev, Luis O. Silva, L. O. Silva +11
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #High-pressure geophysics and materials #Laser-Plasma Interactions and Diagnostics #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/0310390
To be published in proceedings of the conference "Astrophysical particle acceleration in geospace and beyond", Chattanooga, 2002. (11 pages, 6 figures, AGU style)
arxiv created 2003/10/14 · openalex publication_date 2003/10/14 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Charged plasma particles form an anisotropic counter-streaming distribution at the front of a shock. In the near- and ultra-relativistic regimes, Weibel (or two-stream) instability produces near-equipartition, chaotic, small-scale magnetic fields. The fields introduce effective collisions and "thermalize" the plasma particles via pitch-angle scattering. The properties of jitter radiation emitted by accelerated electrons from these small-scale fields are markedly different from synchrotron spectra. Here we theoretical summary and the results of recent numerical 3D PIC plasma kinetic simulations. The relation of the obtained results to the theory of gamma-ray bursts is outlined.