Galactic Streams of Cosmic-ray Electrons and Positrons
Abstract
Isotropic diffusion is a key assumption in many models of cosmic-ray electrons and positrons. We find that simulation results imply a critical energy of ~10-1000~GeV above which electrons and positrons can spend their entire lives in streams threading magnetic fields, due to energy losses. This would restrict the number of electron/positron sources contributing at Earth, likely leading to smooth electron/positron spectra, as is observed. For positrons, this could be as few as one, with an enhanced flux that would ease energetics concerns of a pulsar origin of the positron excess, or even zero, bringing dark matter to the fore. We conclude that ideas about electron/positron propagation must be revised and discuss implications for recent AMS-02 data.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1210.8180,
title = {Galactic Streams of Cosmic-ray Electrons and Positrons},
author = {Matthew D. Kistler and Hasan Yuksel and Alexander Friedland},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1210.8180},
year = {2021}
}
Comments
5 pages, 3 figures; added references and discussion, with contemporaneous responses to PRL referees, including of AMS-02 results