Download or read book Particle Acceleration in Cosmic Plasmas - Paradigm Change?. written by and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 61 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The presentation begins by considering the requirements on the acceleration mechanism. It is found that at least some particles in high-energy sources are accelerated by magnetic reconnection (and not by shocks). The two paradigms can be distinguished by the hardness of the spectra. Shocks typically produce spectra with p> 2 (relativistic shocks have p ~ 2.2); non-linear shocks & drift acceleration may give p