About Fermi Acceleration at Relativistic Shocks and the Scattering Issue

International audienceDifficulties arise in the process of Fermi acceleration at relativistic shocks because they are generically in the superluminal regime and they strongly compress turbulence downstream. Under reasonable conditions usually considered for the turbulent spectrum upstream, cosmic rays do not undergo the scattering that would allow them to make several Fermi cycles. An intense short scale turbulence must be excited in order that the Fermi process can be operative. In this paper, we show the requirement for the turbulence spectrum and give a solution to this issue in the form of the generation of intense compressive waves at short scale upstream. We indicate how the magnetic turbulence compression downstream should not be an obstacle for getting a significant return probability. Thus we conclude that, despite the necessity of some further analysis, the Fermi process at relativistic shock is still promising