Generalized statistical mechanics of cosmic rays

✍ Scribed by Christian Beck

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2004
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 213 KB
• Volume: 331
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0378-4371
• DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2003.09.025

✦ Synopsis

We consider a generalized statistical mechanics model for the creation process of cosmic rays which takes into account local temperature uctuations. This model yields Tsallis statistics for the cosmic ray spectrum. It predicts an entropic index q given by q = 11 9 at largest energies (equivalent to a spectral index of = 5

2 ), and an e ective temperature given by 5 9 TH , where kTH ≈ 180 MeV is the Hagedorn temperature measured in collider experiments. Our theoretically obtained formula is in very good agreement with the experimentally measured energy spectrum of primary cosmic rays.