Rigorous theory for secondary cosmic-ray ionization
| Autor: | Marco Padovani, Kedron Silsbee, Alexei V. Ivlev, Daniele Galli |
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| Rok vydání: | 2021 |
| Předmět: |
Physics
010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences Molecular cloud Mathematics::Number Theory Astrophysics::High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena FOS: Physical sciences Astronomy and Astrophysics Cosmic ray Monotonic function Function (mathematics) Electron 01 natural sciences Astrophysics - Astrophysics of Galaxies Spectral line Space and Planetary Science Ionization Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) 0103 physical sciences Energy spectrum Atomic physics 010303 astronomy & astrophysics Astrophysics::Galaxy Astrophysics 0105 earth and related environmental sciences |
| DOI: | 10.48550/arxiv.2101.05803 |
| Popis: | The energy spectrum of electrons produced in molecular gas by interstellar cosmic rays (CRs) is rigorously calculated as a function of gas column density $N$ traversed by the CRs. This allows us to accurately compute the local value of the secondary ionization rate of molecular hydrogen, $\zeta_{\rm sec}(N)$, as a function of the local primary ionization rate, $\zeta_p(N)$. The ratio $\zeta_{\rm sec}/\zeta_p$ increases monotonically with $N$, and can considerably exceed the value of $\approx0.67$ commonly adopted in the literature. For sufficiently soft interstellar spectra, the dependence $\zeta_{\rm sec}/\zeta_p$ versus $N$ is practically insensitive to their particular shape and thus is a general characteristic of the secondary CR ionization in dense gas. Comment: Accepted to ApJ |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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