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Laboratory astrophysics

Power to the particles

Nature Physics volume 19, pages 159–160 (2023)Cite this article

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Particles in space can be accelerated to high energy, the distribution of which follows a power law. This has now been reproduced in laboratory experiments mimicking astrophysical scenarios, which helps to understand the underlying mechanisms.

Measurements of the energies of particles — from those making up cosmic rays to those in the solar wind and in the near-Earth environment — often show a thermal component corresponding to the local temperature but also reveal the presence of populations at much higher energies. But how these high-energy particles obtain their energy remains an open question, as demonstrating this through observations is challenging. One of the reasons is that the particles are typically detected far away from where they were energized: cosmic rays are produced thousands of light years away in the far reaches of the cosmos, solar energetic particles are generated in the solar corona or near the shocks produced by solar eruptions. Even in the near-Earth environment one would need many concurrent spacecraft to capture a particle’s acceleration to high energies1. Now, writing in Nature Physics, two groups, Abraham Chien and colleagues and Yongli Ping and colleagues, have used laser–plasma experiments to investigate particle acceleration in conditions relevant to astrophysical scenarios2,3.

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Fig. 1: Turbulent reconnection — results from a 3D simulation.

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Giovanni Lapenta

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  1. Giovanni Lapenta
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Correspondence to Giovanni Lapenta.

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The author declares no competing interests.

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Lapenta, G. Power to the particles. Nat. Phys. 19, 159–160 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-022-01864-w

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