Radiative energy losses are very important in regulating the cosmic ray electron and/or positron (CRE) spectrum during their propagation in the Milky Way. Particularly, the Klein-Nishina (KN) effect of the inverse Compton scattering (ICS) results in less efficient energy losses of high-energy electrons, which is expected to leave imprints on the propagated electron spectrum. It has been proposed that the hardening of CRE spectra around 50 GeV observed by Fermi-LAT, AMS-02, and DAMPE could be due to the KN effect. We show in this work that the transition from the Thomson regime to the KN regime of the ICS is actually quite smooth compared with the approximate treatment adopted in some previous works. As a result, the observed spectral hardening of CREs cannot be explained by the KN effect. It means that an additional hardening of the primary electrons spectrum is needed. We also provide a parameterized form for the accurate calculation of the ICS energy-loss rate in a wide energy range.
We present a self-consistent way of modeling synchrotron self-Compton (SSC) effects in gamma-ray burst afterglows, with and without approximated Klein-Nishina suppressed scattering. We provide an analytic approximation of our results, so that it can be incorporated into the afterglow modeling code \texttt{boxfit}, which is currently based on pure synchrotron emission. We discuss the changes in spectral shape and evolution due to SSC effects, and comment on how these changes affect physical parameters derived from broadband modeling. We show that SSC effects can have a profound impact on the sh…
Relativistic magnetic reconnection is a powerful agent through which magnetic energy can be tapped in astrophysics, energizing particles that then produce observed radiation. In some systems, the highest energy photons come from particles Comptonizing an ambient radiation bath supplied by an external source. If the emitting particle energies are high enough, this inverse Compton (IC) scattering enters the Klein-Nishina regime, which differs from the low-energy Thomson IC limit in two significant ways. First, radiative losses become inherently discrete, with particles delivering an order-unity …
In high energy astrophysics scenarios such as blazars, GRBs or PWNe, it is highly probable that ultra-relativistic particles interact with photons in their environment through scattering. As long as the energy of the particle is greater than the energy of the interacting photon, the (classical) scattering is known to be in the Thomson regime. Otherwise, quantum effects will affect the scattering cross section, and we enter into the so-called Klein-Nishina regime. It is well known that radiative cooling in the Thomson regime is very efficient, leading to soft high-energy spectra. However, obser…
We present a new Monte Carlo code for Comptonisation in Astrophysics (MoCA). To our knowledge MoCA is the first code that uses a single photon approach in a full special relativity scenario, and including also Klein-Nishina effects as well as polarisation. In this paper we describe in detail how the code works, and show first results from the case of extended coronae in accreting sources Comptonising the accretion disc thermal emission. We explored both a slab and a spherical geometry, to make comparison with public analytical codes more easy. Our spectra are in good agreement with those from …
We test different physically motivated models for the spectral shape of the $γ$-ray emission in a sample of 128 blazars with known redshifts detected by the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) at energies above 50 GeV. The first nine years of LAT data in the energy range from 300 MeV to 2 TeV are analyzed in order to extend the spectral energy coverage of the 2FHL blazars in our sample. We compare these spectral data to four leptonic models for the production of $γ$-rays through Compton scattering by a population of electrons with different spectral shapes. In the first three models we consider C…
In external Compton scenario, we investigate the formation of the very hard electron spectrum in the fast-cooling regime, using a time-dependent emission model. It is shown that a very hard electron distribution $N'_{\rm e}(\gp)\propto\gp^{-p}$ with the spectral index $p\sim1.3$ is formed below the minimum energy of injection electron when inverse Compton scattering takes place in the Klein-Nishina regime, i.e., inverse Compton scattering of relativistic electrons on broad-line region radiation in flat spectrum radio quasars. This produces a very hard gamma-ray spectrum, and can reasonably exp…
It is generally held that >100 TeV emission from astrophysical objects unambiguously demonstrates the presence of PeV protons or nuclei, due to the unavoidable Klein-Nishina suppression of inverse Compton emission from electrons. However, in the presence of inverse Compton dominated cooling, hard high-energy electron spectra are possible. We show that the environmental requirements for such spectra can naturally be met in spiral arms, and in particular in regions of enhanced star formation activity, the natural locations for the most promising electron accelerators: powerful young pulsars. Our…
We show that the fine structure of the electron spectrum in cosmic rays, especially the excess claimed by AMS-02 at energies $\sim$42 GeV, is fully accounted for in terms of inverse Compton losses in the photon background dominated by ultraviolet, infrared and CMB photons, plus the standard synchrotron losses in the Galactic magnetic field. The transition to the Klein-Nishina regime on the ultraviolet background causes the feature. Hence, contrary to previous statements, observations do not require the overlap of different components. We stress that the feature observed by AMS-02 at energies $…
The recent measurement by LHAASO of gamma-ray emission extending up to 100s of TeV from multiple Galactic sources represents a major observational step forward in the search for the origin of the Galactic cosmic rays. The burning question is if this ultra-high-energy emission is associated to acceleration of protons and/or nuclei to PeV energies, or can be associated to PeV-electron accelerators. A strong Klein-Nishina suppression of inverse Compton emission at these energies is unavoidable, nevertheless we show here that inverse Compton emission can provide a natural explanation of the measur…
The latest AMS-02 data on cosmic ray electrons show a break in the energy spectrum around 40 GeV, with a change in the slope of about 0.1. We perform a combined fit to the newest AMS-02 positron and electron flux data above 10 GeV using a semi-analytical diffusion model where sources includes production of pairs from pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe), electrons from supernova remnants (SNRs) and both species from spallation of hadronic cosmic rays with interstellar medium atoms. We demonstrate that within our setup the change of slope in the AMS-02 electron data is well explained by the interplay bet…
Motivated by the detection of very high energy gamma-rays deep in the afterglow emission of a gamma-ray burst, we revisit predictions of the maximum energy to which electrons can be accelerated at a relativistic blast wave. Acceleration at the weakly-magnetized forward shock of a blast-wave can be limited either by the rapid damping of turbulence generated behind the shock, by the effect of a large-scale ambient magnetic field, or by radiation losses. Within the confines of a standard, single zone, synchrotron-self-Compton (SSC) model, we show that observations of GRB190829A rule out a rapid d…
Muon pairs can be produced in the annihilation of ultra-high energy (UHE, $E \gtrsim 10^{18} \,\mathrm{eV}$) photons with low energy cosmic background radiation in the intergalactic space, giving birth to neutrinos. Although the branching ratio of muon pair production is low, products of other channels, which are mainly electron/positron pairs, will probably transfer most of their energies into the new generated UHE photon in the subsequent interaction with the cosmic background radiation via Compton scattering in deep Klein-Nishina regime. The regeneration of these new UHE photons then provid…
Despite the enormous efforts done in very recent years, both theoretically and experimentally, the basic three questions about the cosmic rays origin remain without clear answers: what are their sources, how are they accelerated, how do they propagate? Gamma-ray astronomy plays a fundamental role in this field. Both relativistic protons and electrons can emit in the gamma-ray band through different processes, but only the detection of hadronic gamma-ray emission can probe the acceleration of cosmic rays. In particular, due to the Klein-Nishina suppression of inverse Compton emission at the hig…
An analytical solution to the the three-dimensional telegraph equation is presented. This equation has recently received some attention but so far the treatment has been one-dimensional. By using the structural similarity to the Klein-Gordon equation, the telegraph equation can be solved in closed form. Illustrative examples are used to discuss the qualitative differences to the diffusion solution. The comparison with a numerical test-particle simulation reveals that some features of an intensity profile can be better explained using the telegraph approach.
