We present a new “pulsating box” setup to investigate particle acceleration in high-$\beta$ plasmas undergoing compression-expansion cycles. Our fully kinetic simulations show that particles are efficiently accelerated by magnetic pumping, producing nonthermal energy distributions with power-law tails. Numerical results are in excellent agreement with a generalized maximum entropy model that we derive, linking the power-law index of distributions to the injected energy. Our results could be relevant for understanding the origin of high-energy particles in certain high-$\beta$ space and astrophysical plasmas.

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• Nonequilibrium statistical mechanics
• Particle acceleration in plasmas
• Plasma acceleration & new acceleration techniques
• Relativistic kinetic theory
• Space & astrophysical plasma