corner
corner
APS » Journals » Phys. Rev. Lett. » Volume 103 » Issue 6
< Previous Article | Next Article >

Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 061101 (2009) [4 pages]

Cosmic Ray Electrons and Positrons from Supernova Explosions of Massive Stars

Download: PDF (151 kB) Buy this article Export: BibTeX or EndNote (RIS)

P. L. Biermann*
Max Planck Institute for Radioastronomy, Bonn, Germany

J. K. Becker†
Institutionen för Fysik, Göteborgs Universitet, Sweden

A. Meli
Erlangen Center for Astroparticle Physics, Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany

W. Rhode
Department of Physics, Universität Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany

E. S. Seo
IPST and Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA

T. Stanev
Bartol Research Institute and Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware, USA

Received 24 March 2009; revised 20 May 2009; published 4 August 2009

We attribute the recently discovered cosmic ray electron and cosmic ray positron excess components and their cutoffs to the acceleration in the supernova shock in the polar cap of exploding Wolf-Rayet and red supergiant stars. Considering a spherical surface at some radius around such a star, the magnetic field is radial in the polar cap as opposed to most of 4π (the full solid angle), where the magnetic field is nearly tangential. This difference yields a flatter spectrum, and also an enhanced positron injection for the cosmic rays accelerated in the polar cap. This reasoning naturally explains the observations. Precise spectral measurements will be the test, as this predicts a simple E-2 spectrum for the new components in the source, steepened to E-3 in observations with an E-4 cutoff.

© 2009 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.061101
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.061101
PACS:
98.70.Sa, 96.50.sb, 97.20.Pm, 97.60.Bw

*Also at Department of Physics and Astronomy, Univ. of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA; Department of Physics., Univ. of Alabama at Huntsville, AL, USA; FZ Karlsruhe, and Physics Department, Univ. Karlsruhe, Germany; Department of Physics and Astronomy, Bonn University, Bonn, Germany.

†Also at Fakultät für Physik & Astronomie, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Bochum, Germany.

 
< Previous Article | Next Article >