Extragalactic cosmic rays diffusing from two populations of sources

Abstract

We consider the possibility of explaining the observed spectrum and composition of the cosmic rays with energies above $10^{17}$ eV in terms of two different extragalactic populations of sources in the presence of a turbulent intergalactic magnetic field (including also a fading Galactic cosmic-ray component). The populations are considered to be the superposition of different nuclear species having rigidity dependent spectra. The first extragalactic population is dominant in the energy range $10^{17}$ to $10^{18}$ eV and consists of sources having a relatively large density ($> 10^{-3}$ Mpc$^{-3}$) and a steep spectrum. The second extragalactic population dominates the cosmic ray flux above few EeV, it has a harder spectral slope and has a high-energy cutoff at few $Z$ EeV (where $eZ$ is the associated cosmic ray charge). This population has a lower density of sources ($<10^{-4}$ Mpc$^{-3}$), so that the typical intersource separation is larger than few tens of Mpc, being significantly affected by a magnetic horizon effect that strongly suppresses its flux for energies below $\sim Z$ EeV. We discuss how this scenario could be reconciled with the values of the cosmic-ray source spectral indices that are expected to result from the diffusive shock acceleration mechanism.