Particle Acceleration by Pickup Process Upstream of Relativistic Shocks

Abstract

Abstract Particle acceleration at magnetized purely perpendicular relativistic shocks in electron–ion plasmas is studied by means of two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations. Magnetized shocks with the upstream bulk Lorentz factor γ 1 ≫ 1 are known to emit intense electromagnetic waves from the shock front, which induce electrostatic plasma waves (wakefield) and transverse filamentary structures in the upstream region via stimulated/induced Raman scattering and filamentation instability, respectively. The wakefield and filaments inject a fraction of the incoming particles into a particle acceleration process, in which particles are once decoupled from the upstream bulk flow by the wakefield, and are picked up again by the flow. The picked-up particles are accelerated by the motional electric field. The maximum attainable Lorentz factor is estimated as γ max , e ∼ α γ 1 3 for electrons and γ max , i ∼ ( 1 + m e γ 1 / m i ) γ 1 2 for ions, where α ∼ 10 is determined from our simulation results. α can increase up to γ 1 for a weakly magnetized shock if γ 1 is sufficiently large. This result indicates that highly relativistic astrophysical shocks such as external shocks of gamma-ray bursts can be an efficient particle accelerator.