Tania Medina Torrejon Sao Paulo

Study of Particle Acceleration in Magnetized Relativistic Jets

Energetic particles are ubiquitous in astrophysical environments and their origin and acceleration still challenges the researchers. I am extending recent studies carried out by my advisor and collaborators focused on the acceleration of energetic particles in magnetically dominated astrophysical environments. Especial attention is devoted to the process involving particle acceleration by magnetic reconnection. This proposed via a first-oder Fermi process has been successfully tested numerically in collisional MHD flows, and also applied to the surrounds of black hole sources. We are currently exploring this process in relativistic magnetized jets. We inject test particles in simulated relativistic MHD jets with helical magnetic fields subject to the current driven kink instability. The development of the kink drives turbulence and magnetic reconnection along the jet. We then launch thousands of test particles and follow their trajectories analyzing how they are accelerated.