High energy cosmic-ray interactions with particles from the Sun

Abstract

Cosmic-ray protons with energies above $10^{16}$ eV passing near the Sun may interact with photons emitted by the Sun and be excited to a ${\Delta }^{+}$ resonance. When the ${\Delta }^{+}$ decays, it produces pions which further decay to muons and photons which may be detected with terrestrial detectors. A flux of muons, photon pairs (from ${\pi }^0$ decay), or individual high-energy photons coming from near the Sun would be a rather striking signature, and the flux of these particles is a fairly direct measure of the flux of cosmic-ray nucleons, independent of the cosmic-ray composition. In a solid angle within $15^{\circ }$ around the Sun the flux of photon pairs is about $\SI{1.3e-3}{}$ particles/(km${}^2\cdot$yr), while the flux of muons is about $\SI{0.33e-3}{}$ particles/(km${}^2\cdot$yr). This is beyond the reach of current detectors like the Telescope Array, Auger, KASCADE-Grande or IceCube. However, the muon flux might be detectable by next-generation air shower arrays or neutrino detectors such as ARIANNA or ARA. We discuss the experimental prospects in some detail. Other cosmic-ray interactions occuring close to the Sun are also briefly discussed.

8 pages, 11 figures

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Cited by in corpus (8)

• Solar Atmospheric Neutrinos: A New Neutrino Floor for Dark Matter Searches
• TeV Solar Gamma Rays From Cosmic-Ray Interactions
• First HAWC Observations of the Sun Constrain Steady TeV Gamma-Ray Emission
• Cosmic ray ensembles as signatures of ultra-high energy photons interacting with the solar magnetic field
• Searches for neutrinos from cosmic-ray interactions in the Sun using seven years of IceCube data
• Probing the cosmic ray mass composition in the knee region through TeV secondary particle fluxes from solar surroundings
• Probing new physics with high-multiplicity events: UHE neutrinos at air-shower detector arrays
• Cosmic ray interactions in the solar system: The Gerasimova-Zatsepin effect