Relativistic Magnetic Reconnection in Electron-Positron-Proton Plasmas: Implications for Jets of Active Galactic Nuclei

Understand

Magnetic reconnection is often invoked to explain the non-thermal radiation of relativistic outflows, including jets of active galactic nuclei (AGN).

• Motivated by the largely unknown plasma composition of AGN jets, we study reconnection in the unexplored regime of electron-positron-proton (pair-proton) plasmas with large-scale two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations.
• We cover a wide range of pair multiplicities (lepton-to-proton number ratio $\kappa=1-199$) for different values of the all-species plasma magnetization ($\sigma=1,3$ and 10) and electron temperature ($\Theta_e\equiv kT_e/m_ec^2=0.1-100$).
• We focus on the dependence of the post-reconnection energy partition and lepton energy spectra on the hot pair plasma magnetization $\sigma_{e,h}$ (i.e., the ratio of magnetic to pair enthalpy densities).