The Generation of Nonthermal Particles in the Relativistic Magnetic Reconnection of Pair Plasmas

Abstract

Particle acceleration in the magnetic reconnection of electron-positron plasmas is studied by using a particle-in-cell simulation. It is found that a significantly large number of nonthermal particles are generated by the inductive electric fields around an X-type neutral line when the reconnection outflow velocity, which is known to be an Alfv\'{e}n velocity, is on the order of the speed of light. In such a relativistic reconnection regime, we also find that electrons and positrons form a power-law-like energy distribution through their drift along the reconnection electric field under the relativistic Speiser motion. A brief discussion of the relevance of these results to the current sheet structure, which has an antiparallel magnetic field in astrophysical sources of synchrotron radiation, is presented.