Cosmic Rays in super Bubbles

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Reinhard Schlickeiser
• Subject Area: Astrophysics and Astronomy
• Term: from 2015 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 286923936

• Final Report Year: 2020

Final Report Abstract

Super bubbles are promising candidates for powerful sources of galactic cosmic rays with TeV energies in the local galactic neighborhood of our solar system. The analysis of cosmic-ray anisotropy measurements strongly suggests the existence of such a source sofar unidentified. The two major scientific objectives of this project therefore were (i) the calculation of momentum spectra of reaccelerated galactic cosmic rays in super bubbles to determine the implied γ-ray and nonthermal longer wavelength photon signatures of such a super bubble, and (ii) the comparison of the theoretical photon spectra with the available γ-ray data from the FERMI-LAT telescope in the 0.25-63 GeV energy range and Planck, IRAS and optical multiwavelength data. Both objectives have been investigated in this joint ANR-DFG project. An important result of the project is that no meaningful enhancement of GeV/TeV regime cosmic ray density has been found in the Orion-Eridanus super bubble, in contrast to the earlier result for the Cygnus cocoon associated with Cyg OB2 cluster.

Publications

• Diffusive cosmic ray acceleration at relativistic shock waves II. Influence of a finite downstream medium, Astrophys. J. 832 (2016) 100
  Antecki, T., Schlickeiser, R. and Krakau, S.
  
• Diffusive cosmic ray acceleration at relativistic shock waves of arbitrary speed with magnetostatic turbulence I. General theory and correct nonrelativistic speed limit, Astrophys. J. 850 (2017) 160
  Schlickeiser, R. and Oppotsch, J.
  
• Cosmic rays in superbubbles, Astrophys. J. 879 (2019) 66
  Tolksdorf, T., Grenier, I. A., Joubaud, T., Schlickeiser, R.
  
• On the anisotropy of galactic cosmic rays, Astrophys. J. 879 (2019) 29
  Schlickeiser, R. Oppotsch, J., Zhang, M., Pogorelov, N. V.
  
• The cosmic-ray content of the Orion-Eridanus superbubble, Astron. Astrophys. 635 (2020) A96
  Joubaud, T., Grenier, I. A., Casandjian, J. M., Tolksdorf, T., Schlickeiser, R.
  
• The original anisotropy of TeV cosmic rays in the local interstellar medium, Astrophys. J. 889 (2020) 97
  Zhang, M., Pogorelov, N. V., Zhang, Y., Hu, H. B., Schlickeiser, R.