Explosive reconnection of double tearing modes in relativistic plasmas: application to the Crab flares

Baty, Hubert; Pétri, Jérôme; Zenitani, Seiji

doi:10.1093/mnrasl/slt104

Cited by 22 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…A stationary reconnecting current sheet is unstable to a fast tearing instability, or plasmoid instability above a critical value of the Lundquist number that is typically quoted as S S c = 10 4 (Loureiro et al 2007), leading to a reconnection rate of order 10 −2 v A (Samtaney et al 2009;Bhattacharjee et al 2009;Uzdensky et al 2010;Loureiro et al 2012;Huang & Bhattacharjee 2013;Murphy et al 2013;Comisso et al 2016;Comisso et al 2017;Tolman et al 2018). Special relativistic resistive magnetohydrodynamic (SRRMHD) simulations have confirmed this critical value of the Lundquist number in relativistic plasmas with a uniform resistivity Zenitani et al 2010;Zanotti & Dumbser 2011;Takamoto 2013;Baty & Pétri 2013;Pétri et al 2014;Del Zanna et al 2016;Papini et al 2018). Plasmoids formed by the tearing instability can undergo mergers, bulk acceleration, and growth within the reconnection layer (Guo et al 2014;Sironi & Spitkovsky 2014;Sironi et al 2016;Werner et al 2018;Petropoulou et al 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…Our AMR approach allows us to effectively resolve the plasmoid phase of the evolution with 16384 2 cells. In previous numerical MHD studies of relativistic reconnection, the nonlinear phase at very late stages of the tearing instability for very high Lundquist numbers was never resolved with such high resolutions (Zenitani et al 2010;Zanotti & Dumbser 2011;Baty & Pétri 2013;Takamoto 2013;Pétri et al 2014;Del Zanna et al 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

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Relativistic resistive magnetohydrodynamic reconnection and plasmoid formation in merging flux tubes

Ripperda

Porth

Sironi

et al. 2019

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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We apply the general relativistic resistive magnetohydrodynamics code BHAC to perform a 2D study of the formation and evolution of a reconnection layer in between two merging magnetic flux tubes in Minkowski spacetime. Small-scale effects in the regime of low resistivity most relevant for dilute astrophysical plasmas are resolved with very high accuracy due to the extreme resolutions obtained with adaptive mesh refinement. Numerical convergence in the highly nonlinear plasmoid-dominated regime is confirmed for a sweep of resolutions. We employ both uniform resistivity and nonuniform resistivity based on the local, instantaneous current density. For uniform resistivity we find Sweet-Parker reconnection, from η = 10 −2 down to η = 10 −4 , for a reference case of magnetisation σ = 3.33 and plasma-β = 0.1. For uniform resistivity η = 5 × 10 −5 the tearing mode is recovered, resulting in the formation of secondary plasmoids. The plasmoid instability enhances the reconnection rate to v rec ∼ 0.03c compared to v rec ∼ 0.01c for η = 10 −4 . For non-uniform resistivity with a base level η 0 = 10 −4 and an enhanced current-dependent resistivity in the current sheet, we find an increased reconnection rate of v rec ∼ 0.1c. The influence of the magnetisation σ and the plasma-β is analysed for cases with uniform resistivity η = 5 × 10 −5 and η = 10 −4 in a range 0.5 ≤ σ ≤ 10 and 0.01 ≤ β ≤ 1 in regimes that are applicable for black hole accretion disks and jets. The plasmoid instability is triggered for Lundquist numbers larger than a critical value of S c ≈ 8000.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Relativistic resistive magnetohydrodynamic reconnection and plasmoid formation in merging flux tubes

Ripperda

Porth

Sironi

et al. 2019

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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“…Magnetic reconnection is the great favorite, however, for the modeling of explosive phenomena, that exhibit very rapid time variability and impulsive character (e.g., Lyutikov 2006;Baty et al 2013;Cerutti et al 2014 andZweibel &Yamada 2009;Uzdensky 2011Uzdensky , 2016. Given the complexity of these models and the wide range of parameters that have to be accounted for, we stick to our maximization strategy and consider in the following the maximally efficient acceleration timescale, with η ∼ 1.…”

Section: Acceleration Processmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can we observe neutrino flares in coincidence with explosive transients?

Guépin

Kotera

2017

A&A

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The new generation of powerful instruments is reaching sensitivities and temporal resolutions that will allow multi-messenger astronomy of explosive transient phenomena, with high-energy neutrinos as a central figure. We derive general criteria for the detectability of neutrinos from powerful transient sources for given instrument sensitivities. In practice, we provide the minimum photon flux necessary for neutrino detection based on two main observables: the bolometric luminosity and the time variability of the emission. This limit can be compared to the observations in specified wavelengths in order to target the most promising sources for follow-ups. Our criteria can also help distinguishing false associations of neutrino events with a flaring source. We find that relativistic transient sources such as high-and low-luminosity gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), blazar flares, tidal disruption events, and magnetar flares could be observed with IceCube, as they have a good chance to occur within a detectable distance. Of the nonrelativistic transient sources, only luminous supernovae appear as promising candidates. We caution that our criterion should not be directly applied to low-luminosity GRBs and type Ibc supernovae, as these objects could have hosted a choked GRB, leading to neutrino emission without a relevant counterpart radiation. We treat a set of concrete examples and show that several transients, some of which are being monitored by IceCube, are far from meeting the criterion for detectability (e.g., Crab flares or Swift J1644+57).

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“…In addition, relativistic reconnection could be important in pair plasmas (see Kagan et al 2015, and references therein), and in particular it should be an ingredient in the modeling of Pulsar Wind Nebulae in order to explain dissipation of magnetic energy in the so-called striped wind region (Coroniti 1990;Kirk & Skjaeraasen 2003;Pétri & Lyubarsky 2007;Amano & Kirk 2013;Takamoto, Pétri & Baty 2015), and the sudden gamma-ray flares observed in the Crab nebula, probably originated in the vicinities of the wind termination shock (Tavani 2013;Baty, Petri & Zenitani 2013;Cerutti et al 2014;Lyutikov et al 2016). Promising results are starting to come from two-fluid relativistic MHD simulations (Barkov et al 2014;Barkov & Komissarov 2016), as a viable alternative to fully kinetic particle-in-cell (PIC) methods, which are more computationally demanding.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fast reconnection in relativistic plasmas: the magnetohydrodynamics tearing instability revisited

Zanna

Papini

Landi

et al. 2016

Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc.

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Fast reconnection operating in magnetically dominated plasmas is often invoked in models for magnetar giant flares, for magnetic dissipation in pulsar winds, or to explain the gamma-ray flares observed in the Crab nebula, hence its investigation is of paramount importance in high-energy astrophysics. Here we study, by means of two dimensional numerical simulations, the linear phase and the subsequent nonlinear evolution of the tearing instability within the framework of relativistic resistive magnetohydrodynamics, as appropriate in situations where the Alfvén velocity approaches the speed of light. It is found that the linear phase of the instability closely matches the analysis in classical MHD, where the growth rate scales with the Lundquist number S as S −1/2 , with the only exception of an enhanced inertial term due to the thermal and magnetic energy contributions. In addition, when thin current sheets of inverse aspect ratio scaling as S −1/3 are considered, the so-called ideal tearing regime is retrieved, with modes growing independently on S and extremely fast, on only a few light crossing times of the sheet length. The overall growth of fluctuations is seen to solely depend on the value of the background Alfvén velocity. In the fully nonlinear stage we observe an inverse cascade towards the fundamental mode, with Petschektype supersonic jets propagating at the external Alfvén speed from the X-point, and a fast reconnection rate at the predicted value R ∼ (ln S) −1 .

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Explosive reconnection of double tearing modes in relativistic plasmas: application to the Crab flares

Cited by 22 publications

References 26 publications

Relativistic resistive magnetohydrodynamic reconnection and plasmoid formation in merging flux tubes

Relativistic resistive magnetohydrodynamic reconnection and plasmoid formation in merging flux tubes

Can we observe neutrino flares in coincidence with explosive transients?

Fast reconnection in relativistic plasmas: the magnetohydrodynamics tearing instability revisited

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