The acquirement of cosmic ray energies by electromagnetic induction in galaxies

✍ Scribed by W.F.G. Swann

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1954
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 511 KB
• Volume: 258
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0016-0032
• DOI: 10.1016/0016-0032(54)90824-8

✦ Synopsis

The paper constitutes a generalization and discussion of the principle of acceleration of charged particles to cosmic ray energies through electromagnetic induction, a principle formerly applied by the writer to a special problem3

Attention is confined to problems where the magnetic field grows with time with axial symmetry, that is to problems in which the electric and magnetic fields, E and H, show no variations with the 0 coordinate. It is shown that:

1. If a charged particle starts to acquire kinetic energy at t = 0, and if the magnetic field is zero at t = 0, then the particle acquires energy continually.

2. If, at t = 0, the magnetic field is finite, a sufficient, but by no means necessary, condition for continual gain of energy is that let/> [HL for all positions and times.

3. If, at t = 0, both magnetic field and particle energy are finite, then, depending upon the sign of the initial angular velocity, the particle may gain or lose energy initially. However, if IEI/> IHI, it will eventually start to gain energy and will continue to do so.

The problem has been studied in some detail for the case where the magnetic field and kinetic energy are both zero at t -0. It appears that the kinetic energy T acquired by a proton which finds itself at the cylindrical radius r, where the average z component of magnetic field is equal to/t, within that radius is such that T > 150r/1, electron volts, if r --~ 25,000 light years, and/t --~ 7 X 10 -s gauss, T ~ 2.3 X 10 lg e.v.