Particle acceleration by magnetic Rayleigh-Taylor instability: Mechanism for flares in black hole accretion flows

We study the magnetic Rayleigh-Taylor instability in relativistic collisionless plasma, as an astrophysical process for nonthermal particle acceleration. We consider dense plasma on top of a highly magnetized cavity with sheared magnetic field. Using particle-in-cell simulations, we show that small...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Vladimir Zhdankin, Bart Ripperda, Alexander A. Philippov
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: American Physical Society 2023-10-01
Series:Physical Review Research
Online Access:http://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.5.043023