Constraining Galactic $p\gamma$ Interactions with Cosmic Ray Electron and Positron Spectra

Abstract

High energy protons produced by various sources of cosmic rays, {\it e.g.} supernova remnants, pulsar wind nebulae, active galactic nuclei and gamma-ray bursts participate in $p\gamma$ and $pp$ interactions. Although $pp$ interactions may be the dominant mechanism in our Galaxy, it is unclear how important $p\gamma$ process is. We show that the upper bound on the fraction of protons participating in $p\gamma$ interactions inside all Galactic astrophysical sources of cosmic rays is 10%.

8 pages, title slightly modified, results corrected

References in corpus (16)

• Cosmic-ray positron fraction measurement from 1 to 30 GeV with AMS-01
• A detailed spectral and morphological study of the gamma-ray supernova remnant RX J1713.7-3946 with H.E.S.S
• RICE Limits on the Diffuse Ultra-High Energy Neutrino Flux
• Constraints on Cosmic Neutrino Fluxes from the ANITA Experiment
• Potential Neutrino Signals from Galactic Gamma-Ray Sources
• KM3NeT: Towards a km3 Mediterranean Neutrino Telescope
• First results of the Instrumentation Line for the deep-sea ANTARES neutrino telescope
• TeV Gamma-Rays from Old Supernova Remnants
• Guaranteed and Prospective Galactic TeV Neutrino Sources
• Expected neutrino signal from supernova remnant RX J1713.7-3946 and flavor oscillations
• Neutrinos from galactic sources of cosmic rays with known gamma-ray spectra
• Dependence of the gamma-ray emission from SN 1006 on the astronomical parameters
• Flux predictions of high-energy neutrinos from pulsars
• The Local Interstellar Spectrum of Cosmic Ray Electrons
• Magnetic field in supernova remnant SN 1987A
• Enhancement of the ${\bar{\nu }}_e$ flux from astrophysical sources by two photon annihilation interactions