Diffusive Shock Acceleration and Turbulent Reconnection

TL;DR

This paper explores how turbulent reconnection (TR) enhances particle acceleration near shocks, showing that TR can significantly outperform traditional diffusive shock acceleration (DSA) in efficiency and maximum energy achieved.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the combination of DSA and TR leads to faster acceleration and higher energy particles, highlighting the synergy between these mechanisms in shock environments.

Findings

TR accelerates particles as efficiently as DSA in large systems

The combined DSA and TR mechanism shortens acceleration time by an order of magnitude

Maximum particle energy is increased by two orders of magnitude with DSA/TR synergy

Abstract

Diffusive Shock Acceleration (DSA) cannot efficiently accelerate particles without the presence of self-consistently generated or pre-existing strong turbulence ($ \delta B/B \sim 1 $) in the vicinity of the shock. The problem we address in this article is: if large amplitude magnetic disturbances are present upstream and downstream of a shock then Turbulent Reconnection (TR) will set in and will participate not only in the elastic scattering of particles but also in their heating and acceleration. We demonstrate that large amplitude magnetic disturbances and Unstable Current Sheets (UCS), spontaneously formed in the strong turbulence in the vicinity of a shock, can accelerate particles as efficiently as DSA in {\bf large scale systems and on long time scales}. We start our analysis with "elastic" scatterers upstream and downstream and estimate the energy distribution of particles escaping from the shock, recovering the well known results from the DSA theory. Next we analyze the additional interaction of the particles with active scatterers (magnetic disturbances and UCS) upstream and downstream of the shock. We show that the asymptotic energy distribution of the particles accelerated by DSA/TR has very similar characteristics with the one due to DSA alone, but the synergy of DSA with TR is much more efficient: The acceleration time is an order of magnitude shorter and the maximum energy reached two orders of magnitude higher. We claim that DSA is the dominant acceleration mechanism in a short period before TR is established, and then strong turbulence will dominate the heating and acceleration of the particles. In other words, the shock serves as the mechanism to set up a strongly turbulent environment, in which the acceleration mechanism will ultimately be the synergy of DSA and TR.