Excesses of cosmic ray spectra from a single nearby source

2016/11/28 by Wei Liu, Xiao-Jun Bi, Sujie Lin +5 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Anisotropy #Antiproton #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Cosmic ray #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Galaxy #Milky Way #Molecular cloud #Neutrino Physics Research #Nuclear physics #Physics #Proton #Spectral line #Supernova #Supernova remnant #astro-ph.HE #hep-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.96.023006

published as Phys. Rev. D 96, 023006 (2017) · 10 pages, 6 figures

arxiv created 2016/11/28 · openalex publication_date 2017/07/24 · arxiv updated 2017/08/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

Growing evidence reveals universal hardening on various cosmic ray spectra, e.g., proton, positron, as well as antiproton fractions. Such universality may indicate they have a common origin. In this paper, we argue that these widespread excesses can be accounted for by a nearby supernova remnant surrounded by a giant molecular cloud. Secondary cosmic rays (p, e⁺) are produced through the collisions between the primary cosmic-ray nuclei from this supernova remnant and the molecular gas. Different from the background, which is produced by the ensemble of a large number of sources in the Milky Way, the local injected spectrum can be harder. The time-dependent transport of particles would make the propagated spectrum even harder. Under this scenario, the anomalies of both primary (p, e^\ensuremath-) and secondary (e⁺, p/p) cosmic rays can be properly interpreted. We further show that the TeV to sub-PeV anisotropy of the proton is consistent with the observations if the local source is relatively young and lying at the anti-Galactic center direction.

Citations

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• Possible bump structure of cosmic ray electrons unveiled by AMS-02 data and its common origin along with the nuclei and positron