Particle acceleration and radiation from relativistic magnetic reconnection: beaming and cooling

Relativistic magnetic reconnection a process in which the magnetic field topology changes and magnetic energy is converted to kinetic energy is one of the two plausible mechanisms for the acceleration of high energy particles and the production of nonthermal X rays and gamma rays in relativistic astrophysical sources such as gamma ray bursts active galactic nuclei and pulsar wind nebulae This radiation is generally highly variable and in the case of the Crab flares it can be emitted beyond the synchrotron burnoff limit resulting from fast radiative cooling of 160 MeV We use particle in cell simulations to find whether reconnection can produce highly beamed particles and variable radiation and whether it can accelerate particles to produce radiation well beyond the normal synchrotron burnoff limit