NBIA Astroparticle Seminar: Lorenzo Sironi

In the most powerful astrophysical sources, reconnection and turbulence operate in the "relativistic" regime, where the magnetic field energy exceeds even the rest mass energy of the plasma. Here, reconnection and turbulence can lead to fast dissipation rates and efficient particle acceleration, thus being prime candidates for powering the fast and bright flares observed from astrophysical non-thermal sources. With fully-kinetic particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations and analytical theory, we investigate the physics of particle acceleration in relativistic reconnection and turbulence. Armed with first-principles energy spectra and pitch angle distributions, we demonstrate that relativistic turbulence and reconnection can explain a number of puzzling observations of black hole coronae and relativistic jets from supermassive black holes.