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The ability of collisionless shocks to efficiently accelerate nonthermal electrons via diffusive shock acceleration (DSA) is thought to require an injection mechanism capable of preaccelerating electrons to high enough energy where they can start crossing the shock front potential. We propose, and show via fully kinetic plasma simulations, that in high-Mach-number shocks electrons can be effectively injected by scattering in kinetic-scale magnetic turbulence produced near the shock transition by the ion Weibel, or current filamentation, instability. We describe this process as a modified DSA mechanism where initially thermal electrons experience the flow velocity gradient in the shock transition and are accelerated via a first-order Fermi process as they scatter back and forth. The electron energization rate, diffusion coefficient, and acceleration time obtained in the model are consistent with particle-in-cell simulations and with the results of recent laboratory experiments where nonthermal electron acceleration was observed. This injection model represents a natural extension of DSA and could account for electron injection in high-Mach-number astrophysical shocks, such as those associated with young supernova remnants and accretion shocks in galaxy clusters.

 

One scenario for the generation of fast radio bursts (FRBs) is magnetic reconnection in a current sheet of the magnetar wind. Compressed by a strong magnetic pulse induced by a magnetar flare, the current sheet fragments into a self-similar chain of magnetic islands. Time-dependent plasma currents at their interfaces produce coherent radiation during their hierarchical coalescence. We investigate this scenario using 2D radiative relativistic particle-in-cell simulations to compute the efficiency of the coherent emission and to obtain frequency scalings. Consistent with expectations, a fraction of the reconnected magnetic field energy,f∼ 0.002, is converted to packets of high-frequency fast magnetosonic waves, which can escape from the magnetar wind as radio emission. In agreement with analytical estimates, we find that magnetic pulses of 10⁴⁷erg s⁻¹can trigger relatively narrowband GHz emission with luminosities of approximately 10⁴²erg s⁻¹, sufficient to explain bright extragalactic FRBs. The mechanism provides a natural explanation for a downward frequency drift of burst signals, as well as the ∼100 ns substructure recently detected inFRB 20200120E.

 

A heat flux in a high- $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}$ plasma with low collisionality triggers the whistler instability. Quasilinear theory predicts saturation of the instability in a marginal state characterized by a heat flux that is fully controlled by electron scattering off magnetic perturbations. This marginal heat flux does not depend on the temperature gradient and scales as $1/\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}$ . We confirm this theoretical prediction by performing numerical particle-in-cell simulations of the instability. We further calculate the saturation level of magnetic perturbations and the electron scattering rate as functions of $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}$ and the temperature gradient to identify the saturation mechanism as quasilinear. Suppression of the heat flux is caused by oblique whistlers with magnetic-energy density distributed over a wide range of propagation angles. This result can be applied to high- $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}$ astrophysical plasmas, such as the intracluster medium, where thermal conduction at sharp temperature gradients along magnetic-field lines can be significantly suppressed. We provide a convenient expression for the amount of suppression of the heat flux relative to the classical Spitzer value as a function of the temperature gradient and $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}$ . For a turbulent plasma, the additional independent suppression by the mirror instability is capable of producing large total suppression factors (several tens in galaxy clusters) in regions with strong temperature gradients.