The interactions of cosmic rays with the solar atmosphere produce secondary particle which can reach the Earth. In this work we present a comprehensive calculation of the yields of secondary particles as gamma-rays, electrons, positrons, neutrons and neutrinos performed with the FLUKA code. We also estimate the intensity at the Sun and the fluxes at the Earth of these secondary particles by folding their yields with the intensities of cosmic rays impinging on the solar surface. The results are sensitive on the assumptions on the magnetic field nearby the Sun and to the cosmic-ray transport in the magnetic field in the inner solar system.
The measured fluxes of secondary particles produced by the interactions of cosmic rays with the astronomical environment represent a powerful tool to infer some properties of primary cosmic rays. In this work we investigate the production of secondary particles in inelastic hadronic interactions between several cosmic rays species of projectiles and different target nuclei of the interstellar medium. The yields of secondary particles have been calculated with the FLUKA simulation package, that provides with very good accuracy the energy distributions of secondary products in a large energy ran…
The current great precision on cosmic-ray (CR) spectral data allows us to precisely test our simple models on propagation of charged particles in the Galaxy. However, our studies are severely limited by the uncertainties related to cross sections for CR interactions. Therefore we have developed a new set of cross sections derived from the FLUKA Monte Carlo code, which is optimized for the treatment of CR interactions. We show these cross sections and the main results on their application for CR propagation studies. Finally, we discuss the prediction of a low-energy break in the electrons spect…
Secondary particles produced in spallation reactions of cosmic rays with the interstellar gas provide valuable information that allow us to investigate the injection and transport of charged particles in the Galaxy. A good understanding of the cross sections of production of these particles is crucial to correctly interpret our models, although the existing experimental data is very scarce and uncertain. We have developed a new set of cross sections, both inelastic and inclusive, computed with the {\tt FLUKA} Monte Carlo nuclear code and tested its compatibility with CR data. Inelastic and inc…
The measured fluxes of secondary particles produced by the interactions of Cosmic Rays (CRs) with the astronomical environment play a crucial role in understanding the physics of CR transport. In this work we present a comprehensive calculation of the secondary hadron, lepton, gamma-ray and neutrino yields produced by the inelastic interactions between several species of stable or long-lived cosmic rays projectiles (p, D, T, 3He, 4He, 6Li, 7Li, 9Be, 10Be, 10B, 11B, 12C, 13C, 14C, 14N, 15N, 16O, 17O, 18O, 20Ne, 24Mg and 28Si) and different target gas nuclei (p, 4He, 12C, 14N, 16O, 20Ne, 24Mg, 2…
We study low energy hadronic interaction models based on BESS observed cosmic ray proton and antiproton spectra at medium high altitude. Among the three popular low energy interaction models, we find that FLUKA reproduces results of BESS observations on secondary proton spectrum reasonably well over the whole observed energy range, the model UrQMD works well at relatively higher energies whereas spectrum obtained with GHEISHA differs significantly from the measured spectrum. Simulated antiproton spectrum with FLUKA, however, exhibits significant deviations from the BESS observation wheras UrQM…
Cosmic rays in the inner solar system are subject to deflection by both the geomagnetic and interplanetary magnetic fields, and simultaneously interact with the Sun's photosphere resulting in the production of gamma rays. This phenomenon can be studied by observing the deficit ("shadow") in the cosmic ray flux from the direction of the Sun and searching for an excess photon signal above the isotropic background. The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Observatory in Mexico has been taking data on the solar disk at TeV energies since the end of 2014. We present our first efforts to estimate th…
For a given solar magnetic field, the near-Sun (phase-space) density of cosmic ray electrons and positrons of energy above about 10GeV can be calculated from first principles, without any assumptions about the cosmic ray diffusion. This is because the sunlight Compton drag must be more important than diffusion. If the solar magnetic field has an appreciable dipole component, the electron/positron density should have a belt-like dent, perhaps extending to several solar radii. The belt structure appears because the quasi-bound orbits are depopulated by the sunlight Compton drag.
The all-particle energy spectrum as measured by the KASCADE-Grande experiment for E = 10^{16} - 10^{18} eV is presented within the framework of the QGSJET II/FLUKA hadronic interaction models. Three different methods were applied based on the muon size and the total number of charged particles individually and in combination. From the study it is found that the spectrum cannot be completely described by a smooth power law due to the presence of characteristic features.
The cosmic-ray Sun shadow, which is caused by high-energy charged cosmic rays being blocked and deflected by the Sun and its magnetic field, has been observed by various experiments, such as Argo-YBJ, HAWC, Tibet, and IceCube. Most notably, the shadow's size and depth was recently shown to correlate with the 11-year solar cycle. The interpretation of such measurements, which help to bridge the gap between solar physics and high-energy particle astrophysics, requires a solid theoretical understanding of cosmic-ray propagation in the coronal magnetic field. It is the aim of this paper to establi…
I show that pair production on sunlight introduces a sizable anisotropy in the cosmic background of TeV gamma-rays. The anisotropy amplitude in the direction of the Sun exceeds the cosmic dipole anisotropy from the motion of the Sun relative to the cosmic rest-frame.
The magnetic field of the Solar corona is difficult to measure directly. However, indirect observations of the solar corona are possible using the deficit in flux of cosmic rays coming from the direction of the Sun. Low-energy cosmic rays (~GeV) are deflected by the inner magnetic field of the Sun and the interplanetary magnetic field frozen into the solar wind. In contrast, high-energy cosmic rays (~TeV and above) are absorbed in the Sun's photosphere producing a shadow in the Sun's nominal position viewed from Earth. Several ground-based instruments have observed the effects of the heliosphe…
Cosmic rays hitting the solar atmosphere generate neutrinos that interact and oscillate in the Sun and oscillate on the way to Earth. These neutrinos could potentially be detected with neutrino telescopes and will be a background for searches for neutrinos from dark matter annihilation in the Sun. We calculate the flux of neutrinos from these cosmic ray interactions in the Sun and also investigate the interactions near a detector on Earth that give rise to muons. We compare this background with both regular Earth-atmospheric neutrinos and signals from dark matter annihilation in the Sun. Our c…
High energy cosmic rays reach the surface of the Sun and start showers with thousands of secondary particles. Most of them will be absorbed by the Sun, but a fraction of the neutral ones will escape and reach the Earth. Here we incorporate a new ingredient that is essential to understand the flux of these solar particles: the cosmic ray shadow of the Sun. We use Liouville's theorem to argue that the only effect of the solar magnetic field on the isotropic cosmic ray flux is to interrupt some of the trajectories that were aiming to the Earth and create a shadow. This shadow reveals the average …
Cosmic Ray Ensembles (CRE) are yet not observed groups of cosmic rays with a common primary interaction vertex or the same parent particle. One of the processes capable of initiating identifiable CRE is an interaction of an ultra-high energy (UHE) photon with the solar magnetic field which results in an electron pair production and the subsequent synchrotron radiation. The resultant electromagnetic cascade forms a very characteristic line-like front of a very small width ($\sim$ meters), stretching from tens of thousands to even many millions of kilometers. In this contribution we present the …
The shadowing effect of the Moon and Sun in TeV cosmic rays has been measured with high statistical significance by several experiments. Unlike particles from directions close to the Moon, however, charged particles passing by the neighborhood of the Sun are affected not only by the geomagnetic but also by the solar near- and interplanetary-magnetic field. Since the latter undergoes a well-known 11-year cycle -- during which it can become highly disordered -- the cosmic-ray shadow cast by the Sun as observed on Earth is expected to change over time. We present an update of the analysis of the …
The shadowing of cosmic ray primaries by the the moon and sun was observed by the MINOS far detector at a depth of \unit[2070]{mwe} using 83.54 million cosmic ray muons accumulated over 1857.91 live-days. The shadow of the moon was detected at the \unit[5.6]{$σ$} level and the shadow of the sun at the \unit[3.8]{$σ$} level using a log-likelihood search in celestial coordinates. The moon shadow was used to quantify the absolute astrophysical pointing of the detector to be 0.17\pm 0.12^\circ. Hints of Interplanetary Magnetic Field effects were observed in both the sun and moon shadow.
Cosmic-ray protons with energies above $10^{16}$ eV passing near the Sun may interact with photons emitted by the Sun and be excited to a $Δ^+$ resonance. When the $Δ^+$ decays, it produces pions which further decay to muons and photons which may be detected with terrestrial detectors. A flux of muons, photon pairs (from $π^0$ decay), or individual high-energy photons coming from near the Sun would be a rather striking signature, and the flux of these particles is a fairly direct measure of the flux of cosmic-ray nucleons, independent of the cosmic-ray composition. In a solid angle within $15^…
During its first year of data taking, the Large Area Telescope (LAT) onboard the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope has collected a large sample of high-energy cosmic-ray electrons and positrons (CREs). We present the results of a directional analysis of the CRE events, in which we searched for a flux excess correlated with the direction of the Sun. Two different and complementary analysis approaches were implemented, and neither yielded evidence of a significant CRE flux excess from the Sun. We derive upper limits on the CRE flux from the Sun's direction, and use these bounds to constrain two cl…
Gamma rays are produced by cosmic ray (CR) protons interacting with the particles at solar photosphere and by cosmic ray electrons and positrons (CRes) via inverse Compton scattering of solar photons. The former come from the solar disk while the latter extend beyond the disk. Evaluation of these emissions requires the flux and spectrum of CRs in the vicinity of the Sun, while most observations provide flux and spectra near the Earth, at around 1 AU from the Sun. Past estimates of the quiet Sun gamma-ray emission use phenomenological modulation procedures to estimate spectra near the Sun (see …
The quiet Sun, i.e. in its non-flaring state or non-flaring regions, emits thermal radiation from radio to ultraviolet. The quiet Sun produces also non-thermal radiation observed in gamma rays due to interactions of Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCR) with the solar gas and photons. We report on a new component: the synchrotron emission by GCR electrons in the solar magnetic field. To the best of our knowledge this is the first time this emission has been theoretically claimed and modeled. We find that the measured GCR electrons with energies from tens of GeV to a few TeV produce synchrotron emission i…
This Commentary discusses the widespread impact of the milestone 1980 paper by Sunyaev and Titarchuk on Comptonization and points out a new possible application to the temporal broadening of the most distant Gamma Ray Bursts.
Cosmic-ray energy densities in central regions of starburst galaxies, as inferred from radio and gamma-ray measurements of, respectively, non-thermal synchrotron and neutral pion decay emission, are typically U_p = O(100)eV/cm3, i.e. typically at least an order of magnitude larger than near the Galactic center and in other non-very-actively star-forming galaxies. We first show that these very different energy-density levels reflect a similar disparity in the respective supernova rates in the two environments, which is not unexpected given the supernova origin of (Galactic) energetic particles.…
ANTARES is the largest undersea neutrino telescope and it has been taking data in its final configuration for more than ten years. On their journey to the Earth, cosmic rays can be absorbed by celestial objects, like the Sun, leading to a deficit in the atmospheric muon flux measured by the ANTARES detector, the so-called Sun "shadow" effect. This phenomenon can be used to evaluate fundamental telescope characteristics: the detector angular resolution and pointing accuracy. This work describes the study of the Sun "shadow" effect using the ANTARES data collected between 2008 and 2017. The stat…
Energetic particles, such as stellar cosmic rays, produced at a heightened rate by active stars (like the young Sun) may have been important for the origin of life on Earth and other exoplanets. Here we compare, as a function of stellar rotation rate ($Ω$), contributions from two distinct populations of energetic particles: stellar cosmic rays accelerated by impulsive flare events and Galactic cosmic rays. We use a 1.5D stellar wind model combined with a spatially 1D cosmic ray transport model. We formulate the evolution of the stellar cosmic ray spectrum as a function of stellar rotation. The…
The Sun is a main source of high energy neutrinos. These neutrinos appear as secondary particles after the Sun absorbs high-energy cosmic rays, that find there a low-density environment (much thinner than our atmosphere) where most secondary pions, kaons and muons can decay before they lose energy. The main uncertainty in a calculation of the solar neutrino flux is due to the effects of the magnetic fields on the absorption rate of charged cosmic rays. We use recent data from HAWC on the cosmic-ray shadow of the Sun to estimate this rate. We evaluate the solar neutrino flux and show that at 1 …
Cosmic rays in galaxy clusters are unique probes of energetic processes operating with large-scale structures in the Universe. Precise measurements of cosmic rays in galaxy clusters are essential for improving our understanding of non-thermal components in the intracluster-medium (ICM) as well as the accuracy of cluster mass estimates in cosmological analyses. In this paper, we perform a cross-correlation analysis with the extragalactic gamma-ray background and the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (tSZ) effect in the cosmic microwave background. The expected cross-correlation signal would contain ri…
Cubic gold-platinum free-falling test masses (TMs) constitute the mirrors of future LISA and LISA-like interferometers for low-frequency gravitational wave detection in space. High-energy particles of Galactic and solar origin charge the TMs and thus induce spurious electrostatic and magnetic forces that limit the sensitivity of these interferometers. Prelaunch Monte Carlo simulations of the TM charging were carried out for the LISA Pathfinder (LPF) mission, that was planned to test the LISA instrumentation. Measurements and simulations were compared during the mission operations. The measured…
Recently an essential progress in development of physical models for cosmic ray induced ionization in the atmosphere is achieved. Basically, the models are full target, i.e. based on Monte Carlo simulation of an electromagnetic-muon-nucleon cascade in the atmosphere. In general, the contribution of proton nuclei in those models is highlighted, i.e. primary cosmic ray $α$-particles and heavy nuclei are neglected or scaled to protons. The development of cosmic ray induced atmospheric cascade is sensitive to the energy and mass of the primary cosmic ray particle. The largest uncertainties in Mont…
We report on a clear solar-cycle variation of the Sun's shadow in the 10 TeV cosmic-ray flux observed by the Tibet air shower array during a full solar cycle from 1996 to 2009. In order to clarify the physical implications of the observed solar cycle variation, we develop numerical simulations of the Sun's shadow, using the Potential Field Source Surface (PFSS) model and the Current Sheet Source Surface (CSSS) model for the coronal magnetic field. We find that the intensity deficit in the simulated Sun's shadow is very sensitive to the coronal magnetic field structure, and the observed variati…
Simulation study of the cosmic ray Sun shadow with a time-dependent solar magnetic field model
Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院紫金山天文台）；School of Astronomy and Space Science, University of Science and Technology of China（中国科学技术大学天文与空间科学学院）
We use 7 years of electron and positron Fermi-LAT data to search for a possible excess in the direction of the Sun in the energy range from 42 GeV to 2 TeV. In the absence of a positive signal we derive flux upper limits which we use to constrain two different dark matter (DM) models producing $e^+ e^-$ fluxes from the Sun. In the first case we consider DM model being captured by the Sun due to elastic scattering and annihilation into $e^+ e^-$ pairs via a long-lived light mediator that can escape the Sun. In the second case we consider instead a model where DM density is enhanced around the S…
The Gerasimova-Zatsepin effect of collisions of ultra-high-energy cosmic ray nuclei with photons emitted by the sun may cause two simultaneous air showers on Earth. This effect is simulated using the full energy spectrum of solar photons, ray tracing through the interplanetary magnetic field and upper limit values for the iron and oxygen cosmic ray fluxes. Only the most abundant interactions in which a single proton is emitted from the nucleus are considered. For the first time the distributions of distances between the individual showers at Earth as a function of the distance of the primary c…
The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) array is sensitive to high energy Cosmic Rays (CR) in the $\sim 10$ to $\sim 200$ TeV energy range, making it possible to construct maps of the so called "Sun Shadow" ($SS$), i. e. of the deficit of CR coming from the direction of the Sun. In this work, we present the variation of the Relative Intensity of the deficit ($SS_{RI}$) for three years of HAWC observations form 2016 to 2018 in which we found a clear decreasing trend of the ($SS_{RI}$) over the studied period, corresponding to the declining phase of the solar cycle 24. By comparing the $SS_{RI}…
The Sun is an excellent laboratory for astroparticle physics but remains poorly understood at GeV--TeV energies. Despite the immense relevance for both cosmic-ray propagation and dark matter searches, only in recent years has the Sun become a target for precision gamma-ray astronomy with the Fermi-LAT instrument. Among the most surprising results from the observations is a hard excess of GeV gamma-ray flux that strongly anti-correlates with solar activity, especially at the highest energies accessible to Fermi-LAT. Most of the observed properties of the gamma-ray emission cannot be explained b…
Boron nuclei in cosmic rays (CRs) are believed to be mainly produced by the fragmentation of heavier nuclei, such as carbon and oxygen, via collisions with the interstellar matter. Therefore, the boron-to-carbon flux ratio (B/C) and the boron-to-oxygen flux ratio (B/O) are very essential probes of the CR propagation. The energy dependence of the B/C ratio from previous balloon-borne and space-based experiments can be well described by a single power-law up to about 1 TeV/n within uncertainties. This work reports direct measurements of B/C and B/O in the energy range from 10 GeV/n to 5.6 TeV/n …
We report the detection of high-energy gamma rays from the quiescent Sun with the Large Area Telescope (LAT) on board the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope (Fermi) during the first 18 months of the mission. These observations correspond to the recent period of low solar activity when the emission induced by cosmic rays is brightest. For the first time, the high statistical significance of the observations allows clear separation of the two components: the point-like emission from the solar disk due to cosmic ray cascades in the solar atmosphere, and extended emission from the inverse Compton sca…
In this paper, we analyze the influence of characteristic solar activity parameters as well as the competition effects in solar activity and atmospheric pressure on the records of cosmic radiation based on HiSPARC (The High School Project on Astro physics Research with Cosmic rays), a ground-based muon detector system monitoring secondary cosmic ray intensity. We gather the data from No.501 HiSPARC station situated at Nikhef in Science Park, Amsterdam, Netherlands (52.3558963°N, 4.9509827°E, 56.18 m of altitude). The accepted anticorrelation between solar activity and the intensity of near gro…
The Sun is a bright source of GeV gamma rays, due to cosmic rays interacting with solar matter and photons. Key aspects of the underlying processes remain mysterious. The emission in the TeV range, for which there are neither observational nor theoretical studies, could provide crucial clues. The new experiments HAWC (running) and LHAASO (planned) can look at the Sun with unprecedented sensitivity. In this paper, we predict the very high-energy (up to 1000 TeV) gamma-ray flux from the solar disk and halo, due to cosmic-ray hadrons and electrons ($e^++e^-$), respectively. We neglect solar magne…
When muons travel through matter, their energy losses lead to nuclear breakup ("spallation") processes. The delayed decays of unstable daughter nuclei produced by cosmic-ray muons are important backgrounds for low-energy astrophysical neutrino experiments, e.g., those seeking to detect solar neutrino or Diffuse Supernova Neutrino Background (DSNB) signals. Even though Super-Kamiokande has strong general cuts to reduce these spallation-induced backgrounds, the remaining rate before additional cuts for specific signals is much larger than the signal rates for kinetic energies of about 6 -- 18 Me…
A key goal of heliophysics is to understand how cosmic rays propagate in the solar system's complex, dynamic environment. One observable is solar modulation, i.e., how the flux and spectrum of cosmic rays changes as they propagate inward. We construct an improved force-field model, taking advantage of new measurements of magnetic power spectral density by Parker Solar Probe to predict solar modulation within the Earth's orbit. We find that modulation of cosmic rays between the Earth and Sun is modest, at least at solar minimum and in the ecliptic plane. Our results agree much better with the l…
