arXiv subjects

Yangyang Cai

Publications and source records attributed to Yangyang Cai.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Rapid Energy Dissipation by Colliding Waves in Strongly Magnetized Plasmas

Rapid dissipation of magnetic energy in highly magnetized environments around neutron stars and black holes is a key open question in high-energy astrophysics. We develop a general kinetic picture of counter-propagating wave collisions in magnetized pair plasmas for arbitrary polarizations and find that magnetic energy can be dissipated on the wave-crossing timescale. The two magnetohydrodynamical conditions on the field invariants, $I_1\equiv B^2-E^2>0$ and $I_2\equiv \mathbf{E}\cdot\mathbf{B}=0$, can be spontaneously violated during the collision. Parallel electric fields develop to screen nonzero $I_2$ with little energy loss, consistent with the evolution described by Force-Free Electrodynamics. When magnetic dominance is lost, strong particle energization is triggered, dissipating magnetic energy on the wave-crossing timescale. This dynamical process yields a rapid dissipation channel of magnetic energy and provides a kinetic pathway to high-energy emission.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2026

MoRAE: Flow-Friendly Self-Supervised Latents for Text-to-Motion Generation

Text-to-motion generation must produce motions that are semantically correct, temporally coherent, and physically plausible. A natural approach is to first project motion data into a structured semantic space and then train a generative model within that space. Such a paradigm has been highly successful in image generation through Representation Autoencoders (RAEs), where a frozen self-supervised encoder provides semantic features for diffusion or flow models to learn from. However, direct transfer of such a paradigm to motion space using Motion-JEPA as the frozen encoder fails dramatically. We diagnose this failure geometrically and identify two motion-specific bottlenecks: (1) the JEPA feature space is spectrally ill-conditioned, making the Gaussian-to-data transport unstable; and (2) even with a well-conditioned spectrum, flow residuals tend to align with decoder-sensitive directions, where small latent errors are amplified into large motion artifacts after decoding. Based on these insights, we propose MoRAE. MoRAE addresses the two bottlenecks separately. A compact bottleneck distills the structured JEPA representation while removing weak and redundant directions, bringing the latent spectrum into a transport-stable regime. Motion-coupled training then aligns the retained latent geometry with the decoder, making characteristic flow errors less costly after decoding. With this flow-friendly latent, a standard non-autoregressive Flow-Matching DiT achieves state-of-the-art performance.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2026

Inverse Transfer in Non-helical 2D Collisionless Magnetic Turbulence: Island-Merger Picture with Kinetic Effects

Magnetic inverse transfer is often invoked to connect small-scale magnetic-field generation to larger coherence scales in high-energy and cosmological plasmas. The underlying magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) arguments combine two logically distinct ingredients: a bulk quantity that is asymptotically conserved in the limit of small resistivity, and a time scale determined by the decay dynamics. In this work, we explore whether this scenario still holds in decaying nonhelical turbulence formed by collisionless plasmas using particle-in-cell simulations. The simulations approximately satisfy $B^2\xi_B^2\simeq{\rm const}$ as in the MHD case, and the fitted exponents in $B^2\propto t^{-p}$ and $\xi_B\propto t^q$ obey $p\simeq2q$. Here $B^2\equiv\langle B_x^2+B_y^2\rangle$ is the average in-plane magnetic energy density, and $\xi_b$ is the magnetic integral scale. However, the decay time scale differs from the MHD case as inferred from the decay exponents. We found $p<1$ and $q<1/2$ in all cases with different initial magnetization $\sigma_0$, with both exponents lower than the MHD values and varying systematically with $\sigma_0$. The spectral peak also migrates toward lower wavenumber at a rate faster than the growth of $\xi_B$, indicating a broken self-similarity. The broken self-similarity is attributed to the appearance of kinetic scales in the magnetic energy spectrum due to pressure anisotropy and Larmor-scale magnetic structures. These results indicate that in astrophysical collisionless plasmas, including but not restrict to solar wind, pulsar-wind nebulae, interstellar medium, and cosmological plasmas, magnetic coherence can continue to grow by inverse transfer, but extrapolations based on MHD decay-time scaling can overestimate the rate of large-scale field growth.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2025

Entity -- Hardware-agnostic Particle-in-Cell Code for Plasma Astrophysics. I: Curvilinear Special Relativistic Module

Entity is a new-generation, fully open-source particle-in-cell (PIC) code developed to overcome key limitations in astrophysical plasma modeling, particularly the extreme separation of scales and the performance challenges associated with evolving, GPU-centric computing infrastructures. It achieves hardware-agnostic performance portability across various GPU and CPU architectures using the Kokkos library. Crucially, Entity maintains a high standard for usability, clarity, and customizability, offering a robust and easy-to-use framework for developing new algorithms and grid geometries, which allows extensive control without requiring edits to the core source code. This paper details the core general-coordinate special-relativistic module. Entity is the first PIC code designed to solve the Vlasov-Maxwell system in general coordinates, enabling a coordinate-agnostic framework that provides the foundational structure for straightforward extension to arbitrary coordinate geometries. The core methodology achieves numerical stability by solving particle equations of motion in the global orthonormal Cartesian basis, despite using generalized coordinates like Cartesian, axisymmetric spherical, and quasi-spherical grids. Charge conservation is ensured via a specialized current deposition technique using conformal currents. The code exhibits robust scalability and performance portability on major GPU platforms (AMD MI250X, NVIDIA A100, and Intel Max Series), with the 3D particle pusher and the current deposition operating efficiently at about 2 nanoseconds per particle per timestep. Functionality is validated through a comprehensive suite of standard Cartesian plasma tests and the accurate modeling of relativistic magnetospheres in curvilinear axisymmetric geometries.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2023

Dynamics of ultrarelativistic charged particles with strong radiation reaction. II. Entry into Aristotelian equilibrium

As first proposed by Gruzinov, a charged particle moving in strong electromagnetic fields can enter an equilibrium state where the power input from the electric field is balanced by radiative losses. When this occurs, the particle moves at nearly light speed along special directions called the principal null directions (PNDs) of the electromagnetic field. This equilibrium is "Aristotelian" in that the particle velocity, rather than acceleration, is determined by the local electromagnetic field. In paper I of this series, we analytically derived the complete formula for the particle velocity at leading order in its deviation from the PND, starting from the fundamental Landau-Lifshitz (LL) equation governing charged particle motion, and demonstrated agreement with numerical solutions of the LL equation. We also identified five necessary conditions on the field configuration for the equilibrium to occur. In this paper we study the entry into equilibrium using a similar combination of analytical and numerical techniques. We simplify the necessary conditions and provide strong numerical evidence that they are also sufficient for equilibrium to occur. Based on exact and approximate solutions to the LL equation, we identify key timescales and properties of entry into equilibrium and show quantitative agreement with numerical simulations. Part of this analysis shows analytically that the equilibrium is linearly stable and identifies the presence of oscillations during entry, which may have distinctive radiative signatures. Our results provide a solid foundation for using the Aristotelian approximation when modeling relativistic plasmas with strong electromagnetic fields.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2022

Dynamics of ultrarelativistic charged particles with strong radiation reaction. I. Aristotelian equilibrium state

Previous studies from the astrophysics and laser physics communities have identified an interesting phenomenon wherein ultrarelativistic charged particles experiencing strong radiation reaction tend to move along special directions fixed by the local electromagnetic field. In the relativity literature these are known as the "principal null directions" (PNDs) of the Maxwell field. A particle in this regime has "Aristotelian" dynamics in the sense that its velocity (rather than acceleration) is determined by the local field. We study this Aristotelian equilibrium in detail, starting from the Landau-Lifshitz equation describing charged particle motion including radiation reaction. Using a Frenet-Serret frame adapted to the PNDs, we derive the Lorentz factor describing motion along the local PND, together with drift velocities reflecting slower passage from one PND to another. We derive conditions on the field configuration that are necessary for such an equilibrium to occur. We demonstrate agreement of our analytic formulas with full numerical solutions of the Landau-Lifshitz equation in the appropriate regime.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2020

Consistent Blandford-Znajek Expansion

The Blandford-Znajek mechanism is the continuous extraction of energy from a rotating black hole via plasma currents flowing on magnetic field lines threading the horizon. In the discovery paper, Blandford and Znajek demonstrated the mechanism by solving the equations of force-free electrodynamics in a perturbative expansion valid at small black hole spin. Attempts to extend this perturbation analysis to higher order have encountered inconsistencies.We overcome this problem using the method of matched asymptotic expansions, taking care to resolve all of the singular surfaces (light surfaces) in the problem. Working with the monopole field configuration, we show explicitly how the inconsistencies are resolved in this framework and calculate the field configuration to one order higher than previously known. However, there is no correction to the energy extraction rate at this order. These results confirm the basic consistency of the split monopole at small spin and lay a foundation for further perturbative studies of the Blandford-Znajek mechanism.

astro-ph.HE↗