Related papers: Cosmic ray ionization of the interstellar medium
Cosmic rays are relativistic particles that come to the Earth from outer space. Despite a great effort made in both experimental and theoretical research, their origin is still unknown. One of the main keys to understand their nature is the…
Physicists have pondered the origin of cosmic rays for over a hundred years. However the last few years have seen an upsurge in the observation, progress in the theory and a genuine increase in the importance attached to the topic due to…
It is now widely acknowledged that cosmic rays experiments can test possible new physics directly generated at the Planck scale or at some other fundamental scale. By studying particle properties at energies far beyond the reach of any…
The density of cosmic rays inside molecular clouds determines the ionization rate in the dense cores where stars form. It is also one of the drivers of astrochemistry leading to the creation of complex molecules. Through Fermi Large Area…
Analyses of TeV-PeV cosmic ray (CR) diffusion around their sources usually assume either isotropic diffusion or anisotropic diffusion due to the regular Galactic magnetic field. We show that none of them are adequate on distances smaller…
Cosmic-rays are the primary initiators of interstellar chemistry, and getting a better understanding of the varying impact they have on the chemistry of interstellar clouds throughout the Milky Way will not only expand our understanding of…
Observations of molecular clouds in the gamma ray domain provide us with a tool to study the distribution of cosmic rays in the Galaxy. This is because cosmic rays can penetrate molecular clouds, undergo hadronic interactions in the dense…
Cosmic rays around the so-called knee in the spectrum at around PeV primary energy are generally galactic in origin. Observations on the form of their energy spectrum and their mass composition are fundamental tools to understand the…
We consider the problem of the cosmic ray spectrum formation assuming that cosmic rays are produced by Galactic sources. The anomalous diffusion equation proposed in our recent papers is used to describe cosmic ray propagation in the…
The distances that galactic cosmic ray electrons and positrons can travel are severely limited by energy losses to at most a few kiloparsec, thereby rendering the local spectrum very sensitive to the exact distribution of sources in our…
The paper describes methods used for the detection of cosmic rays with energies above 10^18 eV (UHECR, UltraHigh Energy Cosmic Rays). It had been anticipated there would be a cutoff in the energy spectrum of primary cosmic rays around 3…
Experimental results from Haverah Park, Yakutsk, AGASA and Fly's Eye are reviewed. All these experiments work in the energy range above 0.1 EeV. The 'dip' structure around 3 EeV in the energy spectrum is well established by all the…
The recently published precise spectrum of cosmic ray protons from the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer has been examined in some detail from the standpoint of a search for deviations from a smooth, simple, power law. We find a significant…
Low energy cosmic rays are the major ionization agents of molecular clouds. However, it has been shown that, if the cosmic ray spectrum measured by Voyager 1 is representative of the whole Galaxy, the predicted ionization rate in diffuse…
Nonlinear kinetic theory of cosmic ray (CR) acceleration in supernova remnants is employed to calculate CR spectra. The magnetic field in SNRs is assumed to be significantly amplified by the efficiently accelerating nuclear CR component. It…
It is argued that if cosmic rays penetrate into molecular clouds, the total energy they lose can exceed the energy from galactic supernovae shocks. It is shown that most likely galactic cosmic rays interacting with the surface layers of…
Cosmic rays in the energy range $10^{18.0}$ - $10^{18.5}$ eV are thought to have a light, probably protonic, composition. To study their origin one can search for anisotropy in their arrival directions. Extragalactic cosmic rays should be…
The origin of the ultrahigh energy cosmic ray remains being a mystery. However, a considerable progress has been made in the past few years due to the good quality data recorded by current cosmic ray observatories. One of the recent…
Cosmic ray astronomy attempts to identify and study the sources of ultrahigh energy cosmic rays. It is unique in its reliance on charged particles as the information carriers. While no discrete source of ultrahigh energy cosmic rays has…
In the absence of magnetic fields and cosmic rays, radiative cooling laws with a range of dependences on temperature affect the stability of interstellar gas. For about four and a half decades, astrophysicists have recognised the importance…