English

Propagation of cosmic-ray nucleons in the Galaxy

Astrophysics 2011-05-05 v2 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

We describe a method for the numerical computation of the propagation of primary and secondary nucleons, primary electrons, and secondary positrons and electrons. Fragmentation and energy losses are computed using realistic distributions for the interstellar gas and radiation fields, and diffusive reacceleration is also incorporated. The models are adjusted to agree with the observed cosmic-ray B/C and 10Be/9Be ratios. Models with diffusion and convection do not account well for the observed energy dependence of B/C, while models with reacceleration reproduce this easily. The height of the halo propagation region is determined, using recent 10Be/9Be measurements, as >4 kpc for diffusion/convection models and 4-12 kpc for reacceleration models. For convection models we set an upper limit on the velocity gradient of dV/dz < 7 km/s/kpc. The radial distribution of cosmic-ray sources required is broader than current estimates of the SNR distribution for all halo sizes. Full details of the numerical method used to solve the cosmic-ray propagation equation are given.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/9807150,
  title  = {Propagation of cosmic-ray nucleons in the Galaxy},
  author = {A. W. Strong and I. V. Moskalenko},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/9807150},
  year   = {2011}
}

Comments

15 pages including 23 ps-figures and 3 tables, latex2e, uses emulateapj.sty (ver. of 11 May 1998, enclosed), apjfonts.sty, timesfonts.sty. To be published in ApJ 1998, v.509 (December 10 issue). More details can be found at http://www.gamma.mpe-garching.mpg.de/~aws/aws.html Some references are corrected