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X-WR-CALNAME;VALUE=TEXT:11/21 ITC Seminar - Maria Petropoulou (Princeton)
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SUMMARY:11/21 ITC Seminar - Maria Petropoulou (Princeton)
DESCRIPTION:<span><span style="color:#222222"><span style="sans-serif"><span style="background-color:#ffffff">"Plasmoids in relativistic magnetic reconnection: blobs of blazar jets?"</span></span></span></span><br style="color:#222222;sans-serif;background-color:#ffffff"><br style="color:#222222;sans-serif;background-color:#ffffff"><span><span style="color:#222222"><span style="sans-serif"><span style="background-color:#ffffff">Abstract: Powerful flares from blazars with minute-timescale variability are challenging for current models of blazar emission. An excellent candidate for describing such events is the relativistic magnetic reconnection model, in which energy is transferred from magnetic fields to compact regions, denoted as plasmoids. Recent particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations have been able to fully capture the</span></span></span></span><br style="color:#222222;sans-serif;background-color:#ffffff"><span><span style="color:#222222"><span style="sans-serif"><span style="background-color:#ffffff">evolution and dynamics of these plasmoids, which contain high-energy particles and magnetic fields in rough energy equipartition. </span></span></span></span><br style="color:#222222;sans-serif;background-color:#ffffff"><br style="color:#222222;sans-serif;background-color:#ffffff"><span><span style="color:#222222"><span style="sans-serif"><span style="background-color:#ffffff">Here, I will show that magnetic reconnection in blazar jets can produce powerful flares whose temporal and spectral properties are consistent with the observations. Multiple flares with a range of flux-doubling time-scales (minutes to several hours) observed over a longer period of flaring activity (days or longer) may be used as a probe of the reconnection layer's orientation and the jet's magnetization.</span></span></span></span>
LOCATION:Phillips Auditorium
STATUS:CONFIRMED
DTSTART:20171121T170000Z
DTEND:20171121T180000Z
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