大自然是否使用中性束来加热致密物体周围的星际等离子体？
Does Nature use neutral beams for interstellar plasma heating around compact objects?
摘要：
中性束注入技术在托卡马克装置中用于加热磁约束等离子体。问题是，类似的机制是否可能在天体物理物体中起作用？例如，超爱丁顿星系双星SS 433拥有重子喷流，以四分之一的光速移动，观测显示在亚pc尺度上有气体冷却和重组的迹象，在更大的尺度$\sim$ 100 pc上也有同样强烈的能量沉积迹象。在这里，我们考虑中性原子传输这种能量的模型。中性原子的亚相对论束穿透星际介质，这些原子逐渐电离并将其能量沉积在一个区域上，该区域的纵向尺寸由“电离长度”确定。储存能量的通道向侧面扩展，并在横向方向上驱动冲击。一旦通道中的密度下降，由束的加热速率相应地下降，并且能量释放的区域沿着束的方向移动。我们讨论了与这种情况相关的独特功能，并推测这种配置也可能会提高冲击加速的“皮卡”质子，由于中性原子的上游和下游的冲击电离而产生。
英文摘要：
A neutral beam injection technique is employed in all major TOKAMAK facilities for heating of magnetically confined plasma. The question then arises, whether a similar mechanism might work in astrophysical objects? For instance, a hyper-Eddington galactic binary SS433 possesses baryonic jets, moving at a quarter of the speed of light, and observations revealed signs of gas cooling and recombination on sub-pc scales and equally strong signs of powerful energy deposition on much larger scales $\sim$100 pc. Here we consider a model where neutral atoms transport this energy. A sub-relativistic beam of neutral atoms penetrates the interstellar medium, these atoms gradually get ionised and deposit their energy over a region, whose longitudinal dimension is set by the "ionisation length". The channel, where the energy is deposited, expands sideways and drives a shock in the lateral direction. Once the density in the channel drops, the heating rate by the beam drops accordingly, and the region of the energy release moves along the direction of the beam. We discuss distinct features associated with this scenario and speculate that such configuration might also boost shock acceleration of the "pick-up" protons that arise due to ionisation of neutral atoms both upstream and downstream of the shock.
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