arXiv subjects

Lorenzo Sironi

Publications and source records attributed to Lorenzo Sironi.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2026

The effect of inverse Compton losses on particle acceleration in three-dimensional relativistic reconnection

Relativistic magnetic reconnection is a key mechanism for dissipating magnetic energy and accelerating particles in astrophysics. In the absence of radiative cooling, recent particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations have shown that high-energy particles gain most of their energy in the upstream region, during a short-lived "free phase" where they meander between the two sides of the layer; when they get captured/trapped by the downstream flux ropes, they undergo a "trapped phase", where no significant energization occurs. Here, we perform a suite of 3D PIC simulations of relativistic reconnection including inverse Compton (IC) losses in the weakly cooled regime in which the radiation-reaction-limited Lorentz factor $γ_{\rm rad}$ exceeds the magnetization $σ$. We show that electron cooling losses do not appreciably alter the reconnection rate, the structure of the layer, and the physics of particle acceleration in the free phase, so the spectrum of free electrons is $dN_{\rm free}/dγ\propto γ^{-1}$, as in the uncooled case. The spectrum of trapped electrons above the cooling break $γ_{\rm cool}$ (in the range $γ_{\rm cool}<γ<γ_{\rm rad}$) is $dN/dγ\propto γ^{-3}$, steeper than the scaling $dN/dγ\propto γ^{-2}$ of uncooled simulations. This confirms that no significant particle energization occurs during the trapped phase. Our results validate the model by arXiv:2302.12269 for particle acceleration in 3D relativistic reconnection, and imply that radiative emission models of reconnection-powered astrophysical sources should employ a two-zone structure, that differentiates between free, rapidly accelerating particles and trapped, passively cooling particles.

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arXiv2025

Reconnection-driven Flares in M87*: Proton-Synchrotron-powered GeV Emission

Magnetic reconnection in current layers that form intermittently in radiatively inefficient accretion flows onto black holes is a promising mechanism for particle acceleration and high-energy emission. It has been recently proposed that such layers, arising during flux eruption events, can power the rapid TeV flares observed from the core of M87. In this scenario, inverse Compton scattering of soft radiation from the accretion flow by energetic electron-positron pairs produced near the reconnection layer was suggested as the primary emission mechanism. However, detailed calculations show that radiation from pairs alone cannot account for the GeV emission detected by the Fermi observatory. In this work, we combine analytic estimates with 3D radiative particle-in-cell simulations of pair-proton plasmas to show that the GeV emission can be naturally explained by synchrotron radiation from protons accelerated in the current sheet. Although the exact proton content of the layer is uncertain, our model remains robust across a broad range of proton-to-pair number density ratios. While protons are subdominant in number compared to pairs, our simulations demonstrate that they can be accelerated more efficiently, leading to a self-regulated steady state in which protons dominate the energy budget. Ultimately, proton synchrotron emission accounts for approximately 5%-20% of the total dissipation power. The majority is radiated as MeV photons via pair synchrotron emission, with a smaller fraction emitted as TeV photons through inverse Compton scattering.

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arXiv2025

The contribution of turbulent AGN coronae to the diffuse neutrino flux

Active galactic nuclei (AGN) can accelerate protons to energies of $\sim$10-100 TeV, with secondary production of high-energy neutrinos. If the acceleration is driven by magnetized turbulence, the main properties of the resulting proton and neutrino spectra can be deduced based on insights from particle-in-cell simulations of magnetized turbulence. We have previously shown that these properties are consistent with the TeV neutrino signal observed from the nearby active galaxy NGC 1068. In this work, we extend this result to a population study. We show that the produced neutrino flux depends mainly on the energetics of the corona - the relative fraction of X-ray, magnetic, and non-thermal proton energy - and on the spectral energy distribution of the AGN. We find that coronae with similar properties can explain neutrinos from the candidate AGN for which IceCube has reported an excess, albeit less significant than NGC 1068. Building on this framework, we show how the neutrino signal evolves with the AGN luminosity, and use this AGN sequence to predict the diffuse neutrino flux from the extragalactic population, showing that it can account for the diffuse neutrino signal observed by IceCube in the $\sim$1-100 TeV energy range.

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arXiv2025

Intermittency in Collisionless Large-Amplitude Turbulence

Large-amplitude turbulence -- characterized by a fluctuating magnetic field component, $δB$, that is stronger than the mean component, $B_0$ -- is generically intermittent, populated with intense localized structures such as sharp field-line bends and rapid field reversals. Recent MHD simulations suggest that these structures play an important role in particle transport and acceleration; however, MHD is inapplicable in most of our Universe, where the plasma is so hot or diffuse that Coulomb collisions are negligible. Therefore, in this paper, we analyze the intermittent properties of collisionless large-amplitude turbulence in electron-positron plasmas via fully kinetic 3D simulations, exploring a wide range of $δB / B_0$ and scale separations between the turbulence driving scale, $L$, and kinetic scales, $c/ω_{\rm p}$. The steady-state collisionless turbulence in our simulations broadly resembles that of MHD, but the development of pressure anisotropy steepens the scaling between magnetic field strength, $B$, and scalar field-line curvature, $K_\parallel$ -- yielding $B \propto K_\parallel^{-3/4}$ -- and consequently modifies the power-law slope of the probability density function of $K_\parallel$; this slope hardens from $K_\parallel^{-2.5}$ to $K_\parallel^{-2.0}$ as $δB / B_0$ increases from 4 to 140. Pressure anisotropy also triggers mirror and firehose instabilities, with the volume-filling fractions of these fluctuations increasing with $δB / B_0$; for our largest $δB / B_0$, $20\%$ of the volume is mirror-unstable and $6\%$ is firehose-unstable. Both the curvature and the Larmor-scale fluctuations in collisionless large-amplitude turbulence are expected to significantly influence cosmic ray transport and acceleration in the interstellar medium of our Galaxy and the intracluster medium of galaxy clusters.

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arXiv2025

Diffuse neutrino flux from coronal magnetospheric current sheets of accreting black holes

Non-jetted AGN exhibit hard X-ray emission with a power law spectrum above $\sim$2 keV, which is thought to be produced through Comptonization of soft photons by electrons and positrons (pairs) in the vicinity of the black hole. The origin and composition of this plasma source, known as the corona, is a matter open for debate. Our study focuses on the role of relativistic protons accelerated in black-hole magnetospheric current sheets in the neutrino production of AGN coronae. We present a model that has two free parameters, namely the proton plasma magnetization $σ_{\rm p}$, which controls the peak energy of the neutrino spectrum, and the Eddington ratio $λ_{\rm Edd}$ (defined as the ratio between X-ray luminosity $L_{\rm X}$ and Eddington luminosity $L_{\rm Edd}$), which controls the amount of energy transferred to secondary particles. Furthermore, we combine our coronal model with an AGN population in order to provide a prediction for the diffuse neutrino flux measured on Earth. We compare our results with the observational data by IceCube and we find a satisfactory agreement on both the flux value and the slope of the neutrino distribution when we assume a $σ_{\rm p}$ value of $10^5$ for all the sources in our sample.

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arXiv2025

Effective resistivity in relativistic collisionless plasmoid-mediated reconnection

Magnetic reconnection can power spectacular high-energy astrophysical phenomena by producing non-thermal energy distributions in highly magnetized regions around compact objects. By means of two-dimensional fully kinetic particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations we investigate relativistic collisionless plasmoid-mediated reconnection in magnetically dominated pair plasmas with and without guide field. In X-points, where diverging flows result in a non-diagonal thermal pressure tensor, a finite residence time for particles gives rise to a localized collisionless effective resistivity. Here, for the first time for relativistic reconnection in a fully developed plasmoid chain we identify the mechanisms driving the non-ideal electric field using a full Ohm's law by means of a statistical analysis based on our PIC simulations. We show that the non-ideal electric field is predominantly driven by gradients of nongyrotropic thermal pressures. We propose a kinetic physics motivated non-uniform effective resistivity model, which is negligible on global scales and becomes significant only locally in X-points, that captures the properties of collisionless reconnection with the aim of mimicking its essentials in non-ideal magnetohydrodynamic descriptions. This effective resistivity model provides a viable opportunity to design physically grounded global models for reconnection-powered high-energy emission.

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arXiv2025

Polarized Emission of Intrabinary Shocks in Spider Pulsars from Global 3D Kinetic Simulations

In spider pulsar systems, a relativistic intrabinary shock forms when the pulsar wind collides with the massive outflow driven off the pulsar's low-mass stellar companion. The shock is a site of non-thermal particle acceleration, likely via shock-driven magnetic reconnection, and produces synchrotron emission. These shocks are among the few systems in which global scales can be reasonably captured with kinetic simulations, enabling first-principles particle acceleration and emission studies. We perform the first global 3D kinetic simulations of spider pulsar intrabinary shocks and predict their polarized emission properties. We report emission spectra, light curves, and polarization patterns as a function of the stripe-averaged magnetic field, cooling strength, and viewing inclination. At $90^\circ$ inclination and for a low stripe-averaged magnetic field, we reproduce the double peaked light curve observed in spider systems. We predict a significant polarization degree $\gtrsim15\%$, which monotonically increases with the stripe-averaged field strength. Our results can be applied to and tested by forthcoming X-ray polarization observations of spider pulsars.

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arXiv2025

Filamentation of the electromagnetic precursor in relativistic quasi-perpendicular electron-positron shocks

We present a scenario that could explain non-thermal particle acceleration in relativistic quasi-perpendicular electron-positron shocks, such as the termination shock of pulsar wind nebulae. The shock produces a strong electromagnetic precursor that propagates into the upstream plasma, which is initially threaded by a uniform background magnetic field. We show that the filamentation instability breaks the precursor into radiation filaments parallel to the shock normal. The transverse scale of the filaments is of the order of a few plasma skin depths. In the shock frame, the bulk Lorentz factor of the upstream plasma is significantly reduced inside the radiation filaments. Then, the instability produces a relativistic shear flow with strong velocity gradients on kinetic scales. The velocity gradients distort the background magnetic field lines, and generate a magnetic field component parallel to the shock normal that reverses across each radiation filament, a configuration that could trigger magnetic reconnection in the upstream plasma. These effects may accelerate particles before the plasma enters the shock.

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arXiv2025

Relativistic Magnetic Reconnection in Astrophysical Plasmas: A Powerful Mechanism of Nonthermal Emission

Magnetic reconnection -- a fundamental plasma physics process, where magnetic field lines of opposite polarity annihilate -- is invoked in astrophysical plasmas as a powerful mechanism of nonthermal particle acceleration, able to explain fast-evolving, bright high-energy flares. Near black holes and neutron stars, reconnection occurs in the ``relativistic'' regime, in which the mean magnetic energy per particle exceeds the rest mass energy. This review reports recent advances in our understanding of the kinetic physics of relativistic reconnection: (1) Kinetic simulations have elucidated the physics of plasma heating and nonthermal particle acceleration in relativistic reconnection; (2) The physics of radiative relativistic reconnection, with its self-consistent interplay between photons and reconnection-accelerated particles -- a peculiarity of luminous, high-energy astrophysical sources -- is the new frontier of research; (3) Relativistic reconnection plays a key role in global models of high-energy sources, both in terms of global-scale layers, as well as of reconnection sites generated as a byproduct of local magnetohydrodynamic instabilities. We summarize themes of active investigation and future directions, emphasizing the role of upcoming observational capabilities, laboratory experiments, and new computational tools.

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arXiv2025

Generation of Large-scale Magnetic Fields Upstream of Gamma-Ray Burst Afterglow Shocks

The origins of the magnetic fields that power gamma-ray burst (GRB) afterglow emission are not fully understood. One possible channel for generating these fields involves the pre-conditioning of the circumburst medium: in the early afterglow phase, prompt photons streaming ahead of the GRB external shock can pair produce, seeding the upstream with drifting electron-positron pairs and triggering electromagnetic microinstabilities. To study this process, we employ 2D periodic particle-in-cell simulations in which a cold electron-proton plasma is gradually enriched with warm electron-positron pairs injected at mildly relativistic speeds. We find that continuous pair injection drives the growth of large-scale magnetic fields via filamentation-like instabilities; the temporal evolution of the field is self-similar and depends on a single parameter, $\left[α/(t_{\rm f} ω_{\rm pi})\right]^{1/2} tω_{\rm pi}$, where $α$ is the ratio of final pair beam density to background plasma density, $t_{\rm f}$ is the duration of pair injection, and $ω_{\rm pi}$ is the plasma frequency of background protons. Extrapolating our results to parameter regimes realistic for long GRBs, we find that upstream pair enrichment generates weak magnetic fields on scales much larger than the proton skin depth; for bright bursts, the extrapolated coherence scale at a shock radius of $R \sim 10^{17} \, {\rm cm}$ is $\left<λ_y\right> \sim 100 \; c/ω_{\rm pi}$ and the corresponding magnetization is $σ\sim 10^{-8}$ for typical circumburst parameters. These results may help explain the persistence of magnetic fields at large distances behind GRB shocks.

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arXiv2025

Machine-Learning Characterization of Intermittency in Relativistic Pair Plasma Turbulence: Single and Double Sheet Structures

The physics of turbulence in magnetized plasmas remains an unresolved problem. The most poorly understood aspect is intermittency -- spatio-temporal fluctuations superimposed on the self-similar turbulent motions. We employ a novel machine-learning analysis technique to segment turbulent flow structures into distinct clusters based on statistical similarities across multiple physical features. We apply this technique to kinetic simulations of decaying (freely evolving) and driven (forced) turbulence in a strongly magnetized pair-plasma environment, and find that the previously identified intermittent fluctuations consist of two distinct clusters: i) current sheets, thin slabs of electric current between merging flux ropes, and; ii) double sheets, pairs of oppositely polarized current slabs, possibly generated by two non-linearly interacting Alfvén-wave packets. The distinction is crucial for the construction of realistic turbulence sub-grid models.

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arXiv2025

Particle Acceleration and Nonthermal Emission at the Intrabinary Shock of Spider Pulsars. II: Fast-Cooling Simulations

Spider pulsars are binary systems composed of a millisecond pulsar and a low-mass companion. Their X-ray emission, varying with orbital phase, originates from synchrotron radiation produced by high-energy electrons accelerated at the intrabinary shock. For fast-spinning pulsars in compact binary systems, the intrabinary shock emission occurs in the fast cooling regime. Using global two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations, we investigate the effect of synchrotron losses on the shock structure and the resulting emission, assuming that the pulsar wind is stronger than the companion wind (so, the shock wraps around the companion), as expected in black widows. We find that the shock opening angle gets narrower for greater losses; the lightcurve shows a more prominent double-peaked signature (with two peaks just before and after the pulsar eclipse) for stronger cooling; below the cooling frequency, the synchrotron spectrum displays a hard power-law range, consistent with X-ray observations.

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arXiv2025

Bulk Motions in the Black Hole Jet Sheath as a Candidate for the Comptonizing Corona

Using two-dimensional general relativistic resistive magnetohydrodynamic simulations, we investigate the properties of the sheath separating the black hole jet from the surrounding medium. We find that the electromagnetic power flowing through the jet sheath is comparable to the overall accretion power of the black hole. The sheath is an important site of energy dissipation as revealed by the copious appearance of reconnection layers and plasmoid chains. About 20% of the sheath power is dissipated between 2 and 10 gravitational radii. The plasma in the dissipative sheath moves along a nearly paraboloidal surface with trans-relativistic bulk motions dominated by the radial component, whose dimensionless 4-velocity is $\sim1.2\pm0.5$. In the frame moving with the mean (radially-dependent) velocity, the distribution of stochastic bulk motions resembles a Maxwellian with an `effective bulk temperature' of $\sim$100 keV. Scaling the global simulation to Cygnus X-1 parameters gives a rough estimate of the Thomson optical depth across the jet sheath $\sim 0.01-0.1$, and it may increase in future magnetohydrodynamic simulations with self-consistent radiative losses. These properties suggest that the dissipative jet sheath may be a viable `coronal' region, capable of upscattering seed soft photons into a hard, nonthermal tail, as seen during the hard states of X-ray binaries and active galactic nuclei.

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arXiv2025

Effective resistivity in relativistic reconnection: a prescription based on fully kinetic simulations

A variety of high-energy astrophysical phenomena are powered by the release -- via magnetic reconnection -- of the energy stored in oppositely directed fields. Single-fluid resistive magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations with uniform resistivity yield dissipation rates that are much lower (by nearly one order of magnitude) than equivalent kinetic calculations. Reconnection-driven phenomena could be accordingly modeled in resistive MHD employing a non-uniform, ``effective'' resistivity informed by kinetic calculations. In this work, we analyze a suite of fully kinetic particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations of relativistic pair-plasma reconnection -- where the magnetic energy is greater than the rest mass energy -- for different strengths of the guide field orthogonal to the alternating component. We extract an empirical prescription for the effective resistivity, $η_{\mathrm{eff}} = αB_0 \mathbf{|J|}^p / \left(|\mathbf{J}|^{p+1}+\left(e n_t c\right)^{p+1}\right)$, where $B_0$ is the reconnecting magnetic field strength, $\bf J$ is the current density, $n_t$ the lab-frame total number density, $e$ the elementary charge, and $c$ the speed of light. The guide field dependence is encoded in $α$ and $p$, which we fit to PIC data. This resistivity formulation -- which relies only on single-fluid MHD quantities -- successfully reproduces the spatial structure and strength of nonideal electric fields, and thus provides a promising strategy for enhancing the reconnection rate in resistive MHD simulations.

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arXiv2025

The Role of Electric Dominance for Particle Injection in Relativistic Reconnection

Magnetic reconnection in relativistic plasmas -- where the magnetization $σ\gg1$ -- is regarded as an efficient particle accelerator, capable of explaining the most dramatic astrophysical flares. We employ two-dimensional (2D) particle-in-cell simulations of relativistic pair-plasma reconnection with vanishing guide field and outflow boundaries to quantify the impact of the energy gain occurring in regions of electric dominance ($E>B$) for the early stages of particle acceleration (i.e., the ``injection'' stage). We calculate the mean fractional contribution $ζ(ε^\ast,ε_{\rm T}$) by $E>B$ fields to particle energization up to the injection threshold energy, $ε^\ast=σ/4$; here, $ε_{\rm T}$ is the particle energy at time $T$. We find that $ζ$ monotonically increases with $σ$ and $ε_{\rm T}$; for $σ\gtrsim 50$ and $ε_{\rm T}/σ\gtrsim 8$, we find that $\gtrsim 80\%$ of the energy gain obtained before reaching $ε^\ast=σ/4$ occurs in $E>B$ regions. We find that $ζ$ is independent of simulation box size $L_x$, as long as $ε_{\rm T}$ is normalized to the maximum particle energy, which scales as $ε_{\rm max}\propto L_{\rm x}^{1/2}$ in 2D. The distribution of energy gains $ε_χ$ acquired in $E>B$ regions can be modeled as $dN/dε_χ\proptoε_χ^{-0.35}\exp[-(ε_χ/0.06\,σ)^{0.5}]$. Our results help assess the role of electric dominance in relativistic reconnection with vanishing guide fields, which may be realized in the magnetospheres of black holes and neutron stars.

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arXiv2024

Kinetic simulations of the Kruskal-Schwarzchild instability in accelerating striped outflows I: Dynamics and energy dissipation

Astrophysical relativistic outflows are launched as Poynting-flux-dominated, yet the mechanism governing efficient magnetic dissipation, which powers the observed emission, is still poorly understood. We study magnetic energy dissipation in relativistic "striped" jets, which host current sheets separating magnetically dominated regions with opposite field polarity. The effective gravity force $g$ in the rest frame of accelerating jets drives the Kruskal-Schwarzschild instability (KSI), a magnetic analogue of the Rayleigh-Taylor instability. By means of 2D and 3D particle-in-cell simulations, we study the linear and non-linear evolution of the KSI. The linear stage is well described by linear stability analysis. The non-linear stages of the KSI generate thin (skin-depth-thick) current layers, with length comparable to the dominant KSI wavelength. There, the relativistic drift-kink mode and the tearing mode drive efficient magnetic dissipation. The dissipation rate can be cast as an increase in the effective width $Δ_{\rm eff}$ of the dissipative region, which follows $dΔ_{\rm eff}/dt\simeq 0.05 \sqrt{Δ_{\rm eff}\,g}$. Our results have important implications for the location of the dissipation region in gamma-ray burst and AGN jets.

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arXiv2024

A New Particle Pusher with Hadronic Interactions for Modeling Multimessenger Emission from Compact Objects

We propose novel numerical schemes based on the Boris method in curved spacetime, incorporating both hadronic and radiative interactions for the first time. Once the proton has lost significant energy due to radiative and hadronic losses, and its gyroradius has decreased below typical scales on which the electromagnetic field varies, we apply a guiding center approximation (GCA). We fundamentally simulate collision processes either with a Monte-Carlo method or, where applicable, as a continuous energy loss, contingent on the local optical depth. To test our algorithm for the first time combining the effects of electromagnetic, gravitational, and radiation fields including hadronic interactions, we simulate highly relativistic protons traveling through various electromagnetic fields and proton backgrounds. We provide unit tests in various spatially dependent electromagnetic and gravitational fields and background photon and proton distributions, comparing the trajectory against analytic results. We propose that our method can be used to analyze hadronic interactions in black hole accretion disks, jets, and coronae to study the neutrino abundance from active galactic nuclei.

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arXiv2024

Escape of fast radio bursts from magnetars

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are bright extragalactic transients likely produced by magnetars. We study the propagation of FRBs in magnetar winds, assuming that the wind is strongly magnetized and composed of electron-positron pairs. We focus on the regime where the strength parameter of the radio wave, $a_0$, is larger than unity, and the wave frequency, $ω_0$, is larger than the Larmor frequency in the background magnetic field, $ω_{\rm L}$. We show that strong radio waves with $a_0>1$ are able to propagate when $ω_0 > a_0ω_{\rm L}$, as the plasma current is a linear function of the wave electric field. The dispersion relation is independent of the wave strength parameter when $ω_0 > a_0ω_{\rm L}$. Instead, radio waves could be damped when $ω_0 < a_0ω_{\rm L}$, as a significant fraction of the wave energy is used to compress the plasma and amplify the background magnetic field. Our results suggest that FRBs should be produced at large distances from the magnetar (i.e., $R>10^{12}{\rm\; cm}$, where the condition $ω_0 > a_0ω_{\rm L}$ is satisfied). Alternatively, the structure of the magnetar wind should be strongly modified during a flare to allow the escape of FRBs produced at radii $R<10^{12}{\rm\; cm}$.

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