A closer scrutiny of cosmic ray proton energy losses
arxiv(2024)
摘要
The percent-level precision attained by modern cosmic ray (CR) observations
motivates reaching a comparable or better control of theoretical uncertainties.
Here we focus on energy-loss processes affecting low-energy CR protons (∼
0.1-5 GeV), where the experimental errors are small and collisional effects
play a comparatively larger role with respect to collisionless transport ones.
We study three aspects of the problem: i) We quantitatively assess the role of
the nuclear elastic cross-section, for the first time, providing analytical
formulae for the stopping power and inelasticity. ii) We discuss the error
arising from treating both elastic and pion production inelastic interactions
as continuous energy loss processes, as opposed to catastrophic ones. The
former is the approximation used in virtually all modern numerical
calculations. iii) We consider sub-leading effects such as relativistic
corrections, radiative and medium processes in ionization energy-losses. Our
analysis reveals that neglecting i) leads to errors close to 1
and below 1 GeV; neglecting ii) leads to errors reaching about 3
considered energy range; iii) contributes to a minor effect, gauged at the
level of 0.1
warrants consideration, and we also recommend incorporating i) into
computations. We conclude with some perspectives on further steps to be taken
towards a high-precision goal of theoretical CR predictions regarding the
treatment of energy-losses.
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