2000/04/26 by E. G. Berezhko, Evgeny G. Berezhko, H. J. Völk +1 · 48 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Bremsstrahlung #Cosmic ray #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Flux (metallurgy) #Galactic Center #Galaxy #Gamma ray #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Nuclear physics #Optics #Photon #Physics #Radiation #Supernova #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/309354
published in The Astrophysical Journal 540(2), 923-929 (IOP Publishing) · 25 pages, 1 figures, to appear in ApJ
arxiv created 2000/04/26 · openalex publication_date 2000/09/10 · arxiv updated 2010/12/03 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
The contribution of the source cosmic rays (SCRs), confined in supernova remnants, to the diffuse high-energy γ-ray emission above 1 GeV from the Galactic disk is studied. Gamma-rays produced by the SCRs have a much harder spectrum compared with those generated by the Galactic cosmic rays that occupy a much larger residence volume uniformly. SCRs contribute less than 10% at GeV energies and become dominant at γ-ray energies above 100 GeV. The contributions from π 0 -decay and inverse Compton γ-rays have comparable magnitude and spectral shape, whereas the bremsstrahlung component is negligible. At TeV energies the contribution from SCRs increases the expected diffuse γ-ray flux by almost an order of magnitude. It is shown that for the inner Galaxy the discrepancy between the observed diffuse intensity and previous model predictions at energies above a few GeV can be attributed to the SCR contribution.