Cosmic ray electrons and the diffuse gamma ray spectrum
| dc.creator | Porter, T. A. | |
| dc.creator | Protheroe, R. J. | |
| dc.date | 1996-08-28 | |
| dc.date | 1997-03-26 | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2026-07-07T10:57:48Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2026-07-07T10:57:48Z | |
| dc.description | The bulk of the diffuse galactic gamma-ray emission above a few tens of GeV has been conventionally ascribed to the decay of neutral pions produced in cosmic-ray interactions with interstellar matter. Cosmic-ray electrons may, however, make a significant contribution to the gamma-ray spectrum at high energies, and even dominate at TeV-PeV energies depending on their injection spectral index and acceleration cut-off energy. If the injection spectrum is flat, the highest energy electrons will also contribute a diffuse hard X-ray/soft gamma-ray flux via synchrotron emission, and this may offer an explanation for the OSSE observation of a steep spectrum below a few MeV from the inner Galaxy. We perform a propagation calculation for cosmic-ray electrons, and use the resulting interstellar electron spectrum to obtain the gamma-ray spectrum due to inverse Compton, synchrotron and bremsstrahlung interactions consistently from MeV to PeV energies. We compare our results with available observations from satellite-borne telescopes, optical Cherenkov telescopes and air shower arrays and place constraints on the injection spectrum of cosmic-ray electrons. With future observations at TeV-PeV energies it should be possible to determine the average interstellar spectrum of cosmic-ray electrons, and hence estimate their spectrum on acceleration. | |
| dc.description | 28 pages, 10 figures, major revision. Submitted to J. Phys. G: Nucl. Part. Phys | |
| dc.identifier | https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9608182 | |
| dc.identifier | http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9608182 | |
| dc.identifier | J.Phys.G23:1765-1784,1997 | |
| dc.identifier | doi:10.1088/0954-3899/23/11/022 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/186880 | |
| dc.subject | Astrophysics | |
| dc.title | Cosmic ray electrons and the diffuse gamma ray spectrum | |
| dc.type | text |