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Magnetic Energy Release in Relativistic Plasma

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2012

Hiroyuki R. Takahashi  and
Ken Ohsuga
Hiroyuki R. Takahashi
Affiliation:
Center for Computational Astrophysics, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Osawa, Mitaka, Tokyo 181-8588, Japan email: takahshi@cfca.jp
Ken Ohsuga
Affiliation:
National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Osawa, Mitaka, Tokyo 181-8588, Japan
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Abstract

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The efficiency of the energy conversion rate in the relativistic magnetic reconnection is investigated by means of Relativistic Resistive Magnetohydrodynamic (R2MHD) simulations. We confirmed that the simple Sweet-Parker type magnetic reconnection is a slow process for the energy conversion as theoretically predicted by Lyubarsky (2005). After the Sweet-Parker regime, we found a growth of the secondary tearing instability in the elongated current sheet. Then the energy conversion rate and the outflow velocity of reconnection jet increase rapidly. Such a rapid energy conversion would explain the time variations observed in many astrophysical flaring events.

To construct a more realistic model of relativistic reconnection, we extend our R2MHD code to R3MHD code by including the radiation effects (Relativistic Resistive Radiation Magnetohydrodynamics R3MHD). The radiation field is described by the 0th and 1st moments of the radiation intensity (Farris et al. 2008, Shibata et al. 2011). The code has already passed some one-dimensional and multi-dimensional numerical problems. We demonstrate the first results of magnetic reconnection in the radiation dominated current sheet.

Keywords

magnetohydrodynamicsradiationrelativity
Type
Poster Papers
Information
Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union , Volume 7 , Symposium S279: Death of Massive Stars: Supernovae and Gamma-Ray Bursts , April 2011 , pp. 405 - 406
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2012

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