Speaker
Description
Cosmic ray measurements have reached a remarkable level of precision in recent years. The nature of cosmic ray sources, however, remains elusive. Our limited knowledge about the source properties and positions poses a challenge for predictions of cosmic ray fluxes in our Galaxy. Thus, it is a common model assumption that cosmic rays are injected by a smooth and steady source continuum. However, supernova remnants, the likely sources of Galactic cosmic rays, are point-like on Galactic scales and inject cosmic rays for a finite period of time. This renders predictions of the cosmic ray fluxes very sensitive to the sources’ positions and injection properties. As these parameters are not accessible through observations directly, the source modelling must be done probabilistically. We present results of Monte Carlo simulations of the cosmic ray proton flux and discuss how precision measurements by current experiments like AMS-02 and DAMPE, as well as potential future experiments like AMS-100 can be used to constrain the energy dependence of escape from the cosmic ray accelerators. Gaining additional insights about cosmic ray sources is crucial for better theoretical predictions of the cosmic ray distribution and, by implication, gamma-ray and neutrino distributions in the Galaxy, too.
