A possible correlation between the high energy electron spectrum and the cosmic-ray secondary-to-primary ratios

Abstract

Recent observations of high energy cosmic-ray electrons by the Fermi-LAT and the HESS experiments between $20$ GeV and $5$ TeV have found that the energy spectrum closely follow a broken power-law with a break at around $1$ TeV. On the other hand, measurements of cosmic-ray secondary-to-primary ratios like the boron-to-carbon ratio seem to indicate a possible change in the slope at energies around $100$ GeV/n. In this paper, we discuss one possible explanation for the observed break in the electron spectrum and its possible correlation with the flattening in the secondary-to-primary ratios at higher energies. In our model, we assume that cosmic-rays after acceleration by supernova remnant shock waves, escape downstream of the shock and remain confined within the remnant until the shock slows down. During this time, the high-energy electrons suffer from radiative energy losses and the cosmic-ray nuclei undergo nuclear fragmentations due to their interactions with the matter. Once the cosmic-rays are released from the supernova remnants, they follow diffusive propagation in the Galaxy where they further suffer from radiative or fragmentation losses.

7 pages, 3 figures, Accepted by MNRAS

References in corpus (7)

• Measurement of the Cosmic Ray e+ plus e- spectrum from 20 GeV to 1 TeV with the Fermi Large Area Telescope
• The origin of the positron excess in cosmic rays
• Measurements of cosmic-ray secondary nuclei at high energies with the first flight of the CREAM balloon-borne experiment
• Galactic electrons and positrons at the Earth:new estimate of the primary and secondary fluxes
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Cited by in corpus (4)

• Explanation of the knee-like feature in the DAMPE cosmic $e^{-}+e^{+}$ energy spectrum
• Secondary Cosmic Ray Nuclei from Supernova Remnants and Constraints to the Propagation Parameters
• On the point source approximation of nearby cosmic-ray sources
• On the PeV knee of cosmic rays spectrum and TeV cutoff of electron spectrum