Journal
PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS
Volume 121, Issue 25, Pages -Publisher
AMER PHYSICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.255101
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Funding
- DoE [DE-SC0016542]
- NASA Fermi [NNX-16AR75G]
- NASA [ATP NNX-17AG21G]
- NSF [ACI-1657507]
- U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) [DE-SC0016542] Funding Source: U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)
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Due to its ubiquitous presence, turbulence is often invoked to explain the origin of nonthermal particles in astrophysical sources of high-energy emission. With particle-in-cell simulations, we study decaying turbulence in magnetically dominated (or, equivalently, relativistic) pair plasmas. We find that the generation of a power-law particle energy spectrum is a generic by-product of relativistic turbulence. The power-law slope is harder for higher magnetizations and stronger turbulence levels. In large systems, the slope attains an asymptotic, system-size-independent value, while the high-energy spectral cutoff increases linearly with system size; both the slope and the cutoff do not depend on the dimensionality of our domain. By following a large sample of particles, we show that particle injection happens at reconnecting current sheets; the injected particles are then further accelerated by stochastic interactions with turbulent fluctuations. Our results have important implications for the origin of nonthermal particles in high-energy astrophysical sources.
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