@article {21730,
	title = {Plasmoid statistics in relativistic magnetic reconnection},
	volume = {475},
	year = {2018},
	month = {2018/04/1},
	pages = {3797 - 3812},
	abstract = {Plasmoids, overdense blobs of plasma containing magnetic fields and high-energy particles, are a self-consistent outcome of the reconnection process in the relativistic regime. Recent two-dimensional particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations have shown that plasmoids can undergo a variety of processes (e.g. mergers, bulk acceleration, growth, and advection) within the reconnection layer. We developed a Monte Carlo code, benchmarked with the recent PIC simulations, to examine the effects of these processes on the steady-state size and momentum distributions of the plasmoid chain. The differential plasmoid size distribution is shown to be a power law, ranging from a few plasma skin depths to \~{}0.1 of the reconnection layer{\textquoteright}s length. The power-law slope is shown to be linearly dependent upon the ratio of the plasmoid acceleration and growth rates, which slightly decreases with increasing plasma magnetization. We perform a detailed comparison of our results with those of recent PIC simulations and briefly discuss the astrophysical implications of our findings through the representative case of flaring events from blazar jets.},
	keywords = {Accretion, accretion discs, Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena, galaxies: jets, gamma-ray burst: general, magnetic reconnection},
	isbn = {0035-8711},
	url = {https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2018MNRAS.475.3797P},
	author = {Petropoulou, M. and Christie, I. M. and Sironi, L. and Giannios, D.}
}
