Microquasars as the major contributors to Galactic cosmic rays around the "knee"

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Kaci, Samy, Giacinti, Gwenael, Aharonian, Felix, Wang, Jie-Shuang
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Kaci, Samy
Giacinti, Gwenael
Aharonian, Felix
Wang, Jie-Shuang
author_facet Kaci, Samy
Giacinti, Gwenael
Aharonian, Felix
Wang, Jie-Shuang
contents Recently, LHAASO detected a gamma-ray emission extending beyond $100\,\rm{TeV}$ from 4 sources associated to powerful microquasars. We propose that such sources are the main Galactic PeVatrons and investigate their contribution to the proton and gamma-ray fluxes by modeling their entire population. We find that the presence of only $\sim10$ active powerful microquasars in the Galaxy at any given time is sufficient to account for the proton flux around the knee and to provide a very good explanation of cosmic-ray and gamma-ray data in a self-consistent picture. The $10\,\rm{TeV}$ bump and the $300\,\rm{TeV}$ hardening in the cosmic-ray spectrum naturally appear, and the diffuse background measured by LHAASO above a few tens of $\rm{TeV}$ is accounted for. This supports the paradigm in which cosmic rays around the knee are predominantly accelerated in a very limited number of powerful microquasars.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_01369
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Microquasars as the major contributors to Galactic cosmic rays around the "knee"
Kaci, Samy
Giacinti, Gwenael
Aharonian, Felix
Wang, Jie-Shuang
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Recently, LHAASO detected a gamma-ray emission extending beyond $100\,\rm{TeV}$ from 4 sources associated to powerful microquasars. We propose that such sources are the main Galactic PeVatrons and investigate their contribution to the proton and gamma-ray fluxes by modeling their entire population. We find that the presence of only $\sim10$ active powerful microquasars in the Galaxy at any given time is sufficient to account for the proton flux around the knee and to provide a very good explanation of cosmic-ray and gamma-ray data in a self-consistent picture. The $10\,\rm{TeV}$ bump and the $300\,\rm{TeV}$ hardening in the cosmic-ray spectrum naturally appear, and the diffuse background measured by LHAASO above a few tens of $\rm{TeV}$ is accounted for. This supports the paradigm in which cosmic rays around the knee are predominantly accelerated in a very limited number of powerful microquasars.
title Microquasars as the major contributors to Galactic cosmic rays around the "knee"
topic High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.01369