English

A Cosmic-ray Electron Spectrum with VERITAS

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2019-08-13 v1

Abstract

Cosmic-ray electrons and positrons (CREs) at GeV-TeV energies are a unique probe of our local Galactic neighbourhood. CREs lose energy rapidly via inverse Compton scattering and synchrotron processes while propagating in the Galaxy, effectively placing a maximal propagation distance for TeV electrons of order ~1 kpc. Within this window, detected CREs can come from only a handful of known, nearby astrophysical sources capable of exciting CREs to that energy or from more exotic production mechanisms, like particle dark matter. HESS, and later MAGIC, have shown that ground-based imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes have the capability to measure CREs into the TeV band. In this proceedings we'll discuss the status of a VERITAS measurement of the electron plus positron cosmic ray spectrum.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1508.06597,
  title  = {A Cosmic-ray Electron Spectrum with VERITAS},
  author = {David Staszak},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1508.06597},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

7 pages, 3 figures; To appear in the Proceedings of the 34th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC2015), The Hague, The Netherlands

R2 v1 2026-06-22T10:42:14.117Z