Scientists at the Institute of Laser Engineering at Osaka University in Japan were the first to create conditions that exist in the vicinity of a black hole and contribute to explosive bursts of radiation. We are talking about the restructuring of the magnetic field force fields inside the plasma, which affects the X-rays emitted by accretion disks. This is reported in an article published in the journal Physical Review E.
Magnetic reconnection was achieved using an LFEX laser (Laser for Fast Ignition Experiments), which is about one hundred meters long. It took two petawatts of power to create a pulse lasting one trillionth of a second, which is a thousand times more than the energy consumption of the entire planet. The strength of the magnetic field has reached a peak of two thousand tesla, while the plasma particles are accelerated to speeds at which relativistic effects begin to act.
Previously, relativistic magnetic reconnection could only be studied using numerical simulations on a supercomputer, but now this state can be artificially obtained in laboratory conditions. The researchers hope that the results will help to better understand the astrophysical processes that can occur in places in the Universe containing extreme magnetic fields.
