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Register a new userGalactic Cosmic Ray Origins and OB Associations: Evidence from SuperTIGER Observations of Elements $_{26}$Fe through $_{40}$Zr
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We report abundances of elements from $_{26}$Fe to $_{40}$Zr in the cosmic radiation measured by the SuperTIGER (Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder) instrument during 55 days of exposure on a long-duration balloon flight over Antarctica. These observations resolve elemental abundances in this charge range with single-element resolution and good statistics. These results support a model of cosmic-ray origin in which the source material consists of a mixture of 19$^{+11}_{-6}$% material from massive stars and $sim$81% normal interstellar medium (ISM) material with solar system abundances. The results also show a preferential acceleration of refractory elements (found in interstellar dust grains) by a factor of $sim$4 over volatile elements (found in interstellar gas) ordered by atomic mass (A). Both the refractory and volatile elements show a mass-dependent enhancement with similar slopes.
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We report abundances of elements from 26Fe to 34Se in the cosmic radiation measured during fifty days of exposure of the Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder (TIGER) balloon-borne instrument. These observations add support to the concept that the bulk of cosmic-ray acceleration takes place in OB associations, and they further support cosmic-ray acceleration models in which elements present in interstellar grains are accelerated preferentially compared with those found in interstellar gas.
OB associations are unbound groups of young stars made prominent by their bright OB members, and have long been thought to be the expanded remnants of dense star clusters. They have been important in astrophysics for over a century thanks to their luminous massive stars, though their low-mass members have not been well studied until the last couple of decades. This has changed thanks to data from X-ray observations, spectroscopic surveys and astrometry from Gaia that allows their full stellar content to be identified and their dynamics to be studied, which in turn is leading to changes in our understanding of these systems and their origins, with the old picture of Blaauw (1964) now being superseded. It is clear now that OB associations have considerably more substructure than once envisioned, both spatially, kinematically and temporally. These changes have implications for the star formation process, the formation and evolution of planetary systems, and the build-up of stellar populations across galaxies.
We have measured the isotopic abundances of neon and a number of other species in the galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) using the Cosmic Ray Isotope Spectrometer (CRIS) aboard the ACE spacecraft. Our data are compared to recent results from two-component Wolf-Rayet (WR) models. The three largest deviations of galactic cosmic ray isotope ratios from solar-system ratios predicted by these models, 12C/16O, 22Ne/20Ne, and 58Fe/56Fe, are very close to those observed. All of the isotopic ratios that we have measured are consistent with a GCR source consisting of ~20% of WR material mixed with ~80% material with solar-system composition. Since WR stars are evolutionary products of OB stars, and most OB stars exist in OB associations that form superbubbles, the good agreement of our data with WR models suggests that OB associations within superbubbles are the likely source of at least a substantial fraction of GCRs. In previous work it has been shown that the primary 59Ni (which decays only by electron-capture) in GCRs has decayed, indicating a time interval between nucleosynthesis and acceleration of >10^5 yr.In this paper we suggest a scenario that should allow much of the 59Ni to decay in the OB association environment and conclude that the hypothesis of the OB association origin of cosmic rays appears to be viable.
We perform a consistent modeling of cosmic ray electrons, positrons and of the radio emission of the Galaxy. For the time we reproduce all relevant data sets between 1 GeV and 1 TeV including the recent AMS-02 positron fraction results. We show that below few GeV cosmic ray and radio data require that electron primary spectrum to be drastically suppressed and the propagated spectrum be dominated by secondary particles. Above 10 GeV an electron + positron extra-component with a hard spectrum is required. The positron spectrum measured below few GeV is consistently reproduced only within low reacceleration models. We also constrain the scale-height of the cosmic-ray distribution showing that a thin halo ($z_t lsim 2 kpc$) is excluded.
We present recent contemporaneous X-ray and optical observations of the Be/X-ray binary system A,0535+26 with the textit{Fermi}/Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) and several ground-based observatories. These new observations are put into the context of the rich historical data (since $sim$1978) and discussed in terms of the neutron star Be-disk interaction. The Be circumstellar disk was exceptionally large just before the 2009 December giant outburst, which may explain the origin of the unusual recent X-ray activity of this source. We found a peculiar evolution of the pulse profile during this giant outburst, with the two main components evolving in opposite ways with energy. A hard 30-70 mHz X-ray QPO was detected with GBM during this 2009 December giant outburst. It becomes stronger with increasing energy and disappears at energies below 25,keV. In the long-term a strong optical/X-ray correlation was found for this system, however in the medium-term the H$_alpha$ EW and the V-band brightness showed an anti-correlation after $sim$2002 Agust. Each giant X-ray outburst occurred during a decline phase of the optical brightness, while the H$_alpha$ showed a strong emission. In late 2010 and before the 2011 February outburst, rapid V/R variations are observed in the strength of the two peaks of the H$_alpha$ line. These had a period of $sim$,25 days and we suggest the presence of a global one-armed oscillation to explain this scenario. A general pattern might be inferred, where the disk becomes weaker and shows V/R variability beginning $sim$,6 months following a giant outburst.
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