Gamma Ray Astronomy and the Origin of Galactic Cosmic Rays

Abstract

Diffusive shock acceleration operating at expanding supernova remnant shells is by far the most popular model for the origin of galactic cosmic rays. Despite the general consensus received by this model, an unambiguous and conclusive proof of the supernova remnant hypothesis is still missing. In this context, the recent developments in gamma ray astronomy provide us with precious insights into the problem of the origin of galactic cosmic rays, since production of gamma rays is expected both during the acceleration of cosmic rays at supernova remnant shocks and during their subsequent propagation in the interstellar medium. In particular, the recent detection of a number of supernova remnants at TeV energies nicely fits with the model, but it still does not constitute a conclusive proof of it, mainly due to the difficulty of disentangling the hadronic and leptonic contributions to the observed gamma ray emission. In this paper, the most relevant cosmic-ray-related results of gamma ray astronomy are briefly summarized, and the foreseeable contribution of future gamma ray observations to the final solution of the problem of cosmic ray origin is discussed.

Invited review talk, to appear in the Proceedings of the XXI European Cosmic Ray Symposium

References in corpus (5)

• Gamma ray emission from SNR RX J1713.7-3946 and the origin of galactic cosmic rays
• The Status and future of ground-based TeV gamma-ray astronomy. A White Paper prepared for the Division of Astrophysics of the American Physical Society
• The Galactic gamma-ray club
• Non-thermal radiation from molecular clouds illuminated by cosmic rays from nearby supernova remnants
• TenTen: A New Array of Multi-TeV Imaging Cherenkov Telescopes

Cited by in corpus (1)

• High Energy Phenomena In The Universe