COMPUTATION OF SYNTHETIC SPECTRA FROM SIMULATIONS OF RELATIVISTIC SHOCKS

Brian Reville*, John G. Kirk

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

39 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations of relativistic shocks are in principle capable of predicting the spectra of photons that are radiated incoherently by the accelerated particles. The most direct method evaluates the spectrum using the fields given by the Lienard-Wiechart potentials. However, for relativistic particles this procedure is computationally expensive. Here we present an alternative method that uses the concept of the photon formation length. The algorithm is suitable for evaluating spectra both from particles moving in a specific realization of a turbulent electromagnetic field or from trajectories given as a finite, discrete time series by a PIC simulation. The main advantage of the method is that it identifies the intrinsic spectral features and filters out those that are artifacts of the limited time resolution and finite duration of input trajectories.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1283-1295
Number of pages13
JournalAstrophysical Journal
Volume724
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 01 Dec 2010

Keywords

  • relativistic processes
  • PARTICLE-ACCELERATION
  • BREMSSTRAHLUNG
  • radiation mechanisms: general
  • MODEL
  • COSMIC-RAYS
  • GENERATION
  • SYNCHROTRON-RADIATION
  • PAIR PRODUCTION
  • methods: numerical
  • MEDIA
  • COLLISIONLESS SHOCKS
  • gamma-ray burst: general
  • EMISSION

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