The cosmic $e^{\pm }$ anomaly

Abstract

Via a Bayesian likelihood analysis using 219 recent cosmic ray spectral data points we extract the anomalous part of the cosmic $e^{\pm }$ flux. First we show that a significant tension exists between the $e^{\pm }$ related and the rest of the fluxes. Interpreting this tension as the presence of an anomalous component in the $e^{\pm }$ related data, we then infer the values of selected cosmic ray propagation parameters excluding the anomalous data sample from the analysis. Based on these values we calculate background predictions with theoretical uncertainties for PAMELA and Fermi-LAT. We find a statistically significant deviation between the Fermi-LAT $e^{-}+e^{+}$ data and the predicted background even when (systematic) uncertainties are taken into account. Identifying this deviation as an anomalous $e^{\pm }$ contribution, we make an attempt to distinguish between various sources that may be responsible for the anomalous $e^{\pm }$ flux.

Appeared in Proceedings of the 14th Workshop 'What Comes Beyond the Standard Models', 11. - 21. July 2011 Bled, DMFA-Zaloznistvo, Ljubljana, December 2011

References in corpus (8)

• Observation of an anomalous positron abundance in the cosmic radiation
• PAMELA results on the cosmic-ray antiproton flux from 60 MeV to 180 GeV in kinetic energy
• The cosmic-ray electron flux measured by the PAMELA experiment between 1 and 625 GeV
• Fermi LAT observations of cosmic-ray electrons from 7 GeV to 1 TeV
• Constraints on cosmic-ray propagation models from a global Bayesian analysis
• Measurements of cosmic-ray secondary nuclei at high energies with the first flight of the CREAM balloon-borne experiment
• Implications of the Cosmic Ray Electron Spectrum and Anisotropy measured with Fermi-LAT
• Cosmic Ray Anomalies from the MSSM?

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Constraining the $\bar{p}/p$ Ratio in TeV Cosmic Rays with Observations of the Moon Shadow by HAWC