New Constraints on the Highest-Energy Cosmic-Ray Electrons and Positrons

2009/12/02 by Matthew D. Kistler, Kistler, Matthew D., Hasan Yuksel +2 · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #Particle Detector Development and Performance #astro-ph.GA #astro-ph.HE #hep-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.0912.0264

4 pages, 2 figures

arxiv created 2009/12/02 · openalex publication_date 2009/12/02 · arxiv updated 2009/12/08 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

At energies above a few TeV, no measurements of the cosmic-ray electron spectrum exist yet. By considering the similarity of air showers induced by electrons and gamma rays as seen by ground-based arrays, we use published limits on isotropic gamma-ray fluxes to place first constraints on the >10 TeV electron spectrum. We demonstrate that, due the proximity of known sources, the flux of such electrons (and positrons) can be large. We show how these smoothly connect to lower-energy positrons measured by PAMELA and relate to exciting new indications from Fermi.

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