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Implications on the origin of cosmic rays in light of 10 TV spectral softenings

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Abstract

Precise measurements of the energy spectra of cosmic rays (CRs) show various kinds of features deviating from single power-laws, which give very interesting and important implications on their origin and propagation. Previous measurements from a few balloon and space experiments indicate the existence of spectral softenings around 10 TV for protons (and probably also for Helium nuclei). Very recently, the DArk Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) measurement about the proton spectrum clearly reveals such a softening with a high significance. Here we study the implications of these new measurements, as well as the groundbased indirect measurements, on the origin of CRs. We find that a single component of CRs fails to fit the spectral softening and the air shower experiment data simultaneously. In the framework of multiple components, we discuss two possible scenarios, the multiple source population scenario and the background plus nearby source scenario. Both scenarios give reasonable fits to the wide-band data from TeV to 100 PeV energies. Considering the anisotropy observations, the nearby source model is favored.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2016YFA0400200), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 11722328, 11525313, U1738205, and 11851305), and the 100 Talents Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Dark Matter and Space Astronomy, Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, 210033, China

    Chuan Yue, Peng-Xiong Ma, Qiang Yuan, Yi-Zhong Fan, Zhan-Fang Chen, Ming-Yang Cui, Tie-Kuang Dong, Xiaoyuan Huang, Wei Jiang, Shi-Jun Lei, Xiang Li, Hao Liu, Yang Liu, Chuan-Ning Luo, Xu Pan, Zhi-Hui Xu, Zun-Lei Xu, Guan-Wen Yuan & Jing-Jing Zang

  2. School of Astronomy and Space Science, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China

    Peng-Xiong Ma, Qiang Yuan, Yi-Zhong Fan, Zhan-Fang Chen, Wei Jiang, Chuan-Ning Luo, Xu Pan, Zhi-Hui Xu & Guan-Wen Yuan

  3. Center for High Energy Physics, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Qiang Yuan

  4. State Key Laboratory of Particle Detection and Electronics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China

    Hao-Ting Dai, Cheng-Ming Liu, Yi-Feng Wei, Li-Bo Wu & Yun-Long Zhang

  5. Key Laboratory of Particle Astrophysics, Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Wen-Xi Peng & Rui Qiao

  6. Institute of Modern Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Ya-Peng Zhang & Yong-Jie Zhang

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  1. Chuan Yue
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Correspondence to Qiang Yuan or Yi-Zhong Fan.

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Yue, C., Ma, PX., Yuan, Q. et al. Implications on the origin of cosmic rays in light of 10 TV spectral softenings. Front. Phys. 15, 24601 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11467-019-0946-8

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