Investigation on kinetic effects of relativistic flow transport in ambient plasma environment

Relativistic flows (RFs) are particularly intriguing phenomena ubiquitously existed in the Universe and are often connected with exciting high-energy astrophysical central engines. After a century since their first discovery, many efforts have been made to investigate the launch and propagation of RFs in macroscopic scales. However, there are still many open questions regarding to the fundamental parameters of RFs and the ambient environment, and how they interact with each other. In this talk, I shall report recent progress on the theoretical and numerical studies of RFs transport in ambient environment, using fully kinetic Particle-in-Cell (PIC) simulations. For RFs in AGNs where the composition remains unclear, we find that the baryon component, so-called baryon loading effect (BLE), can elongate their transport distance and alter their electron phase space distribution [1]. For RFs in XRBs where extreme magnetic fields exist, we find that quantum electrodynamic (QED) effects play a crucial role, enabling a particle-photon-particle relay transport mechanism [2]. These prove that the microscopic dynamics of can significantly determine the macroscopic transport of RFs.

[1] W. P. Yao, B. Qiao et al., NJP 20, 052060 (2018). [2] W. P. Yao, B. Qiao et al., PoP 24, 082904 (2017).