My research during the PhD lied in the field of high-energy astrophysics
and its connection with plasma physics, having the primary goal of investigating
high-energy emissions from extragalactic sources through (relativistic)
magneto-hydrodynamical simulations.
The research aims at studying the role of particles acceleration due to
magnetic reconnection in astrophysical sources, through the implementation
of a current sheet detection algorithm and the
calculation of post-reconnection particles energy distribution based on the fluid
quantities surrounding the acceleration site and the results of Particles-in-a-cell
simulations reported in the literature.
Magnetic reconnection is a plasma process that dissipates the energy stored in
magnetic field into plasma kinetic energy, through a rearrangement of magnetic field topology,
resulting in particles heating and acceleration.
It is thought to play an important role in numerous astrophysical sources like gamma-ray bursts
and jets from active galactic nuclei (AGN). Magnetic reconnection and shock acceleration are usually
invoked among the possible mechanisms to produce particle non-thermal spectra.
Cosmic Rays are the radiations coming from outside the Earth’s atmosphere. Their motion in the galaxyis described by the transport equation. In my Master thesis I developed a module of the PLUTO code to study the effects of an anisotropic spatial diffusion coefficient and compared the results with observations of progressive hardening of the proton slope at low galactic radii in the CRs spectrum as showed by Fermi-LAT data.