Speaker
Description
Plasma shock waves are among the most promising sites for efficient particle acceleration in extragalactic jets. In mildly relativistic electron–ion shocks, electrons can be heated to high Lorentz factors, providing a natural explanation for the large minimum electron energies often required to model the emission of BL Lac objects (Arbet-Engels et al. 2025). In this work, we present results from particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations of mildly relativistic weakly magnetized shocks, covering a broad range of shock Lorentz factors (γ = 1.5–16), magnetizations (σ = 10⁻⁴–0.1), and shock obliquities. We investigate ion-to-electron energy transfer, magnetic field amplification, and particle acceleration, and their dependence on upstream shock parameters. Finally, we discuss the implications of these results for multiwavelength emission modeling.