arXiv subjects

Jörg P. Rachen

Publications and source records attributed to Jörg P. Rachen.

16 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2021

Thermal-to-nonthermal element abundances in different Galactic environments

The non-thermal source abundances of elements play a crucial role in the understanding of cosmic ray phenomena from a few GeV up to several tens of EeV. In this work a first systematic approach is presented that describes the change of the abundances from the thermal to the non-thermal state via non-linear diffusive shock acceleration by a temporally evolving shock. Hereby, not only time-dependent ionization states of elements contained in the ambient gas are considered, but also elements condensed on solid, charged dust grains, which not only can be injected into the acceleration process as well, but are from our findings even the dominant injection channel for most heavy elements. This generic parametrized model is then applied to the case of particle acceleration by supernova remnants in various ISM phases as well as Wolf-Rayet (WR) wind environments. We show that the overall low to medium energy cosmic ray distribution by WR explosions yield a significantly harder, which makes this contribution quite promising in order to explain the spectral hardening of the flux of certain elements, such as helium, observed by AMS-02 and other experiments at rigidities of about 1 TV, which would also be an important test for the potential role of WR-progenitor supernovae as the sources of Galactic cosmic rays around the second knee.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2021

Cosmic rays in the GeV-TeV energy range from two types of supernovae

The AMS-02 experiment has reported precise measurements of energy spectra of several cosmic-ray species in the range of ~(0.5-2000) GeV/n. An intriguing finding is the differences in the spectral shape between the different species. Protons exhibit the steepest spectrum of all the species, and helium, carbon, oxygen and iron spectra are found to be harder than that of neon, magnesium and silicon. These observations are difficult to explain as diffusive shock acceleration, the currently most plausible theory for cosmic particle acceleration at high energies, expects independence of the spectral index from mass and charge of the accelerated particle. Moreover, propagation in the Galaxy has been shown to not being able to compensate for this discrepancy. In this work, we present an explanation based on two-component model for the origin of cosmic rays in the Galaxy -- the first component originating from regular supernova remnants in the interstellar medium and the second component from Wolf-Rayet supernovae. Using recent results on cosmic-ray injection enhancement at supernova shocks in the uniform interstellar medium and in the wind environment of Wolf-Rayet stars, we show that the combination of the two components may explain most of the behavior observed by the AMS-02 experiment.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2020

Nonthermal element abundances at astrophysical shocks

The nonthermal source abundances of elements play a crucial role in the understanding of cosmic ray (CR) phenomena from a few GeV up to several tens of EeV. We present a first systematic approach to describe the change of the abundances from the thermal to the nonthermal state via diffusive shock acceleration by a temporally evolving shock. We consider hereby not only ionization states of elements contained in the ambient gas, which we allow to be time dependent due to shock heating, but also elements condensed on solid, charged dust grains which can be injected into the acceleration process as well. Our generic parametrized model is then applied to the case of particle acceleration by supernova remnants in various ISM phases, for which we use state-of-the-art computation packages to calculate the ionization states of all elements. The resulting predictions for low energy cosmic ray (LECR) source abundances are compared with the data obtained by various experiments. We obtain excellent agreement for shocks in warm ionized ISM environments, which include HII regions, if dust grains are injected into the diffusive shock acceleration process with a much higher efficiency than ions. Less dependence of the fit quality is found on the mass-to-charge ratio of ions. For neutral environments, assuming that there are shocks in the weakly ionized component, and for the hot ionized medium we obtain generally inferior fits, but except for the cold neutral medium we do not exclude them as subdominant sites of Galactic CR production. The key challenge is found to be putting the LECR abundance of pure gas phase elements like neon and the (semi-)volatile elements phosphorus, sulfur and chlorine into the right balance with silicon, calcium and elements of the iron group. Finally, a brief outlook to the potential consequences for the understanding of the CR composition at higher energies is presented.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2020

Conspiratorial cosmology. II. The anthropogenic principle

We revisit our 2013 claim [arXiv:1303.7476] that the Universe is the result of a conspiratorial plot, and find that it cannot be trusted, because even the belief in this conspiracy likely results from a conspiracy. On the basis of mathematical beauty, the final results of the Planck mission, the exploration of the dark sector by means of occult rituals and symbols, and a powerful new philosophical approach to physics, we demonstrate here that not only the existence of our Universe but the whole concept of reality has to be rejected as obsolete and generally misleading. By introducing the new concept of the "anthropogenic principle", we eventually illuminate the darkest corners of the conspiracy behind the conspiracy and briefly discuss some important implications regarding the survival of wo*mankind.

physics.pop-ph↗

arXiv2019

Targeting Earth: CRPropa learns to aim

Realistic predictions for the arrival directions of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays require extensive simulations of UHECR propagation through 3D space, potentially even including cosmological evolution and timing effects. Such 3D or 4D simulations of cosmic-ray propagation suffer from the fact that a relatively small target - the observer sphere - needs to be hit. If particles are ejected in any direction from the source according to the source emission geometry, such simulations are tremendously inefficient. We present here a targeting mechanism which finds an optimal emission geometry to maximize the number of hits while remaining unbiased in the arrival-direction distribution. This can lead to speedups by many of orders of magnitude, depending on the simulation setup. We present the basic mathematics to produce unbiased results from targeted simulations, demonstrate its effectiveness with the simulation package CRPropa 3 for various propagation scenarios, and discuss prospects to include this mechanism as a standard part of CRPropa in the future.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2019

Origin of ultra-high energy cosmic rays: The cosmological manifesto

A spectre is haunting physics---the spectre of non-thermal processes. Manifesting itself in astroparticle physics, all classical disciplines of physics and astronomy have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: While astronomers try to destroy it with ignorance, convinced that only thermal processes are of importance to the dynamics of the Universe, particle physicists obscure it in the clouds of mystified admiration, simply because the Universe works on energy scales which are far above of their own technical and economical capabilities. It is high time to understand the energy scales of astroparticle physics in those of the Universe itself, by linking the existence of their basic essence, cosmic rays, via a universal mechanism to the ground reservoir of all non-thermal energy, gravitation. By this we meet the nursery tale of the enigmatic, mysterious sources of cosmic rays with a set of numbers naturally derived from cosmological parameters, which manifest themselves in a large range of astrophysical objects that stand in rank and file along a diagonal in the famous Hillas-plot, and in fact only have in common that they efficiently convert gravitational energy. While this manifesto, promoting the cosmological revolution in astroparticle physics, does not release us from detailed modelling of cosmic ray and multimessenger sources in order to understand all the details delivered by current experiments, it does help to clear up our view on the problem and to avoid some common fallacies and misconceptions.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2019

A parameterized catalog of radio galaxies as ultra-high energy cosmic ray sources

Many attempts have been made to provide catalogs of potential sources of ultra-high energy cosmic ray (UHECR) particles based on various astronomical tracers, such as observed radio or gamma-ray emission. A closer look reveals, however, that they all suffer from significant bias and selection effects. We present here a demo-version of a catalog for one often-discussed UHECR source class, radio galaxies (or radio-loud AGN), which is based on a complete theoretical description of jet-energetics, particle acceleration physics, relativistic beaming effects and nuclear composition, parametrized by a comprehensible set of adjustable physical quantities. In addition to the bright radio galaxies Centaurus A, Virgo A, Fornax A and Cygnus A discussed in previous work, we find several sources with blazar-like properties that can contribute on a similar level if relativistic beaming effects are considered. We present a simple method to test the basic properties of the catalog for any choice of parameters (without the need to run expensive simulations), and find that in the canonical case the anisotropy signals expected from radio galaxies promise to be in good agreement with current observational findings. In particular, radio galaxies can reproduce almost exactly the direction of the dipole above 8 EeV detected by the Pierre Auger Observatory if we assume that extragalactic magnetic fields are strong (>1nG) only in structures, but very weak in voids. We plan to provide a completed and improved version of this catalog in electronic form, to be used in more detailed UHECR propagation simulations. For immediate applications, we suggest a complete set of 16 strong UHECR sources which can contribute to UHECR anisotropy on the level which can be currently probed by experiment, and note that 6 of them have not been considered in any previous studies.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2019

IMAGINE: modeling the Galactic magnetic field

The IMAGINE Consortium aims to bring modeling of the magnetic field of the Milky Way to a next level, by using Bayesian inference. IMAGINE includes an open-source modular software pipeline that optimizes parameters in a user-defined Galactic magnetic field model against various selected observational datasets. Bayesian priors can be added as external probabilistic constraints of the model parameters. These conference proceedings describe the science goals of the IMAGINE Consortium, the software pipeline and its inputs, viz observational data sets, Galactic magnetic field models, and Bayesian priors.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2018

Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays from Radio Galaxies

Radio galaxies are intensively discussed as the sources of cosmic rays observed above about $3\,{\times}\,10^{18}\,\text{eV}$, called ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs). We present a first, systematic approach that takes the individual characteristics of these sources into account, as well as the impact of the extragalactic magnetic-field structures up to a distance of 120 Mpc. We use a mixed simulation setup, based on 3D simulations of UHECRs ejected by observed, individual radio galaxies taken out to a distance of 120 Mpc, and on 1D simulations over a continuous source distribution contributing from beyond 120 Mpc. Additionally, we include the ultra-luminous radio galaxy Cygnus A at a distance of about $250\,$Mpc, as its contribution is so strong that it must be considered as an individual point source. The implementation of the UHECR ejection in our simulation setup is based on a detailed consideration of the physics of radio jets and standard first-order Fermi acceleration. We show that the average contribution of radio galaxies taken over a very large volume cannot explain the observed features of UHECRs measured at Earth. However, we obtain excellent agreement with the spectrum, composition, and arrival-direction distribution of UHECRs measured by the Pierre Auger Observatory, if we assume that most UHECRs observed arise from only two sources: The ultra-luminous radio galaxy Cygnus A, providing a mostly light composition of nuclear species dominating up to about $6\,{\times}\,10^{19}\,$eV, and the nearest radio galaxy Centaurus A, providing a heavy composition dominating above $6\,{\times}\,10^{19}\,$eV. Here we have to assume that extragalactic magnetic fields out to 250 Mpc, which we did not include in the simulation, are able to isotropize the UHECR events at about 8 EeV arriving from Cygnus A.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2018

Inferring Galactic magnetic field model parameters using IMAGINE - An Interstellar MAGnetic field INference Engine

Context. The Galactic magnetic field (GMF) has a huge impact on the evolution of the Milky Way. Yet currently there exists no standard model for it, as its structure is not fully understood. In the past many parametric GMF models of varying complexity have been developed that all have been fitted to an individual set of observational data complicating comparability. Aims. Our goal is to systematize parameter inference of GMF models. We want to enable a statistical comparison of different models in the future, allow for simple refitting with respect to newly available data sets and thereby increase the research area's transparency. We aim to make state-of-the-art Bayesian methods easily available and in particular to treat the statistics related to the random components of the GMF correctly. Methods. To achieve our goals, we built IMAGINE, the Interstellar Magnetic Field Inference Engine. It is a modular open source framework for doing inference on generic parametric models of the Galaxy. We combine highly optimized tools and technology such as the MultiNest sampler and the information field theory framework NIFTy in order to leverage existing expertise. Results. We demonstrate the steps needed for robust parameter inference and model comparison. Our results show how important the combination of complementary observables like synchrotron emission and Faraday depth is while building a model and fitting its parameters to data. IMAGINE is open-source software available under the GNU General Public License v3 (GPL-3) at: https://gitlab.mpcdf.mpg.de/ift/IMAGINE

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2016

Coeval Observations of a Complete Sample of Blazars with Effelsberg, IRAM 30m, and Planck

We present the outline and first results of a project using the synergies of the long term blazar radiomillimetre monitoring program F-GAMMA, the continued scanning of the millimetre-submillimetre sky by the Planck satellite, together with several dedicated observing programs at the Effelsberg 100m telescope, to obtain a data sample unprecedented in both time resolution and frequency span.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2015

Blind Search for Variability in Planck Data

The sky is full of variable and transient sources on all time scales, from milliseconds to decades. Planck's regular scanning strategy makes it an ideal instrument to search for variable sky signals in the millimetre and submillimetre regime, on time scales from hours to several years. A precondition is that instrumental noise and systematic effects, caused in particular by non-symmetric beam shapes, are properly removed. We present a method to perform a full sky blind search for variable and transient objects at all Planck frequencies.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2013

Conspiratorial cosmology - the case against the Universe

Based on the cosmological results of the Planck Mission, we show that all parameters describing our Universe within the ΛCDM model can be constructed from a small set of numbers known from conspiracy theory. Our finding is confirmed by recent data from high energy particle physics. This clearly demonstrates that our Universe is a plot initiated by an unknown interest group or lodge. We analyse possible scenarios for this conspiracy, and conclude that the belief in the existence of our Universe is an illusion, as previously assumed by ancient philosophers, 20th century science fiction authors and contemporary film makers.

physics.pop-ph↗

arXiv2013

Bayesian Classification of Astronomical Objects -- and what is behind it

We present a Bayesian method for the identification and classification of objects from sets of astronomical catalogs, given a predefined classification scheme. Identification refers here to the association of entries in different catalogs to a single object, and classification refers to the matching of the associated data set to a model selected from a set of parametrized models of different complexity. By the virtue of Bayes' theorem, we can combine both tasks in an efficient way, which allows a largely automated and still reliable way to generate classified astronomical catalogs. A problem to the Bayesian approach is hereby the handling of exceptions, for which no likelihoods can be specified. We present and discuss a simple and practical solution to this problem, emphasizing the role of the "evidence" term in Bayes' theorem for the identification of exceptions. Comparing the practice and logic of Bayesian classification to Bayesian inference, we finally note some interesting links to concepts of the philosophy of science.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2010

Radio-submm flares from blazars in a discontinuous jet model

We present a model in which AGN jets are described by a dense series of plasma blobs, distributed in masses and velocities. The blobs expand and collide, and ultimately form a continuous jet flow as observed on larger scales. When blobs collide, energetic electrons are produced by first order Fermi acceleration, and emit synchrotron radiation at the radio-optical frequencies with a double-broken power law spectrum. The difference of this model to the well-known Marscher&Gear-model is, that in our model shocks are produced on a range of scales, and exist only temporarily, which causes differences in the prediction for the spectral evolution of flares. We apply our model to radio-submm data obtained for 3C454.3, and briefly discuss implications for gamma-ray production.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv1996

Contributions to the Cosmic Ray Flux above the Ankle: Clusters of Galaxies

Motivated by the suggestion of Kang, Ryu \& Jones (1996) that particles can be accelerated to high energies via diffusive shock acceleration process at the accretion shocks formed by the infalling flow toward the clusters of galaxies, we have calculated the expected particle flux from a cosmological ensemble of clusters. We use the observed temperature distribution of local clusters and assume a simple power-law evolutionary model for the comoving density of the clusters. The shock parameters such as the shock radius and velocity are deduced from the ICM temperature using the self-similar solutions for secondary infall onto the clusters. The magnetic field strength is assume to be in equipartition with the postshock thermal energy behind the accretion shock. We also assume that the injected energy spectrum is a power-law with the exponential cutoff at the maximum energy which is calculated from the condition that the energy gain rate for diffusive shock acceleration is balanced by the loss rate due to the interactions with the cosmic background radiation. In contrast to the earlier paper we have adopted here the description of the cosmic ray diffusion by Jokipii (1987) which leads to considerably higher particle energies. Finally the injected particle spectrum at the clusters is integrated over the cosmological distance to earth by considering the energy loss due to the interactions with the cosmic background radiation. Our calculations show that the expected spectrum of high-energy protons from the cosmological ensemble of the cluster accretion shocks could match well the observed cosmic ray spectrum near $10^{19}$eV with reasonable parameters and models if about $10^{-4}$ of the infalling kinetic energy can be injected into the intergalactic space as the high energy particles.

astro-ph↗