New calculation of antiproton production by cosmic ray protons and nuclei

Abstract

A dramatic increase in the accuracy and statistics of space-borne cosmic ray (CR) measurements has yielded several breakthroughs over the last several years. The most puzzling is the rise in the positron fraction above ~10 GeV over the predictions of the propagation models assuming pure secondary production. The accuracy of the antiproton production cross section is critical for astrophysical applications and searches for new physics since antiprotons in CRs seem to hold the keys to many puzzles including the origin of those excess positrons. However, model calculations of antiproton production in CR interactions with interstellar gas are often employing parameterizations that are out of date or are using outdated physical concepts. That may lead to an incorrect interpretation of antiproton data which could have broad consequences for other areas of astrophysics. In this work, we calculate antiproton production in pp-, pA-, and AA-interactions using EPOS-LHC and QGSJET-II-04, two of the most advanced Monte Carlo (MC) generators tuned to numerous accelerator data including those from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). We show that the antiproton yields obtained with these MC generators differ by up to an order of magnitude from yields of parameterizations commonly used in astrophysics.

16 pages (emulateapj style), 18 figures, 2 tables; The Astrophysical Journal, in press

References in corpus (12)

• Observation of an anomalous positron abundance in the cosmic radiation
• A new measurement of the antiproton-to-proton flux ratio up to 100 GeV in the cosmic radiation
• Discrepant hardening observed in cosmic-ray elemental spectra
• The origin of the positron excess in cosmic rays
• Constraints on WIMP Dark Matter from the High Energy PAMELA $\bar{p}/p$ data
• Measurement of boron and carbon fluxes in cosmic rays with the PAMELA experiment
• High-energy antiprotons from old supernova remnants
• The Cosmic Ray Antiproton Background for AMS-02
• Cosmic ray production in supernova remnants including reacceleration: the secondary to primary ratio
• Nuclear enhancement of the photon yield in cosmic ray interactions
• Antideuterons from dark matter annihilations and hadronization model dependence
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• Implications of Lithium to Oxygen AMS-02 spectra on our understanding of cosmic-ray diffusion
• Explaining the GeV antiproton/$\gamma -$ray excesses and W-boson mass anomaly in an inert two Higgs doublet model
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