Cosmic ray electrons and positrons from supernova explosions of massive stars

Abstract

We attribute the recently discovered cosmic ray electron and cosmic ray positron excess components and their cutoffs to the acceleration in the supernova shock in the polar cap of exploding Wolf Rayet and Red Super Giant stars. Considering a spherical surface at some radius around such a star, the magnetic field is radial in the polar cap as opposed to most of 4 pi (the full solid angle), where the magnetic field is nearly tangential. This difference yields a flatter spectrum, and also an enhanced positron injection for the cosmic rays accelerated in the polar cap. This reasoning naturally explains the observations. Precise spectral measurements will be the test, as this predicts a simple E^-2 spectrum for the new components in the source, steepened to E^-3 in observations with an E^-4 cutoff.

accepted for publication in PRL 4 pages, 1 figure

References in corpus (2)

• Observation of an anomalous positron abundance in the cosmic radiation
• Cosmic Rays X. The cosmic ray knee and beyond: Diffusive acceleration at oblique shocks

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Dark Matter Candidates from Particle Physics and Methods of Detection
• Inverse Compton constraints on the Dark Matter e+e- excesses
• The origin of cosmic rays: Explosions of massive stars with magnetic winds and their supernova mechanism
• Effects of Velocity-Dependent Dark Matter Annihilation on the Energy Spectrum of the Extragalactic Gamma-ray Background
• Searches for high-energy neutrino emission in the Galaxy with the combined IceCube-AMANDA detector
• Higgsino dark matter model consistent with galactic cosmic ray data and possibility of discovery at LHC-7