Time: July 18, 10:00AM

Location: middle conference room, 3rd floor

Title:  Relativistic Partice-in-Cell Studies of Magnetically Dominated Outflows  

Speaker: Hui Li (Los Alamos National Laboratory) 

Abstract: 

  Observations of several high-energy astrophysical systems have emphasized the important role of magnetic fields in the magnetically dominated outflows, including powerful jets from Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs), pulsar winds and possibly gamma-ray bursts. We present large-scale particle-in-cell simulations of relativistic reconnection to examine the magnetic energy dissipation processes and the associated particle acceleration processes. We show that the relativistic flows generated by reconnection can give rise to a first-order Fermi-like acceleration that operates very efficiently in highly magnetically dominated limit. Implications for observations of AGN jets and GRBs will be discussed as well.