Radiation-Dominated Relativistic Current Sheets

Relativistic current sheets (RCSs) feature plasma instabilities considered as the potential key to magnetic energy dissipation in Poynting-flux-dominated plasma flows. Kinetic plasma simulations show that the physical nature of RCS evolution changes in the presence of radiation losses: In the ultrarelativistic regime (i.e., magnetization parameter sigma = 104 defined as the ratio of magnetic to plasma rest frame energy density), the combined effect of nonlinear RCS dynamics and synchrotron emission introduces a temperature anisotropy triggering the growth of the relativistic tearing mode. In contrast to previous studies of the RCS with sigma similar to 1, the relativistic tearing mode then prevails over the drift kink mode. The ultrarelativistic RCS shows a typical life cycle from radiation-induced collapse towards a radiation-quiescent phase with topology analogous to that introduced by Sweet and Parker.