arXiv subjects

Payel Mukhopadhyay

Publications and source records attributed to Payel Mukhopadhyay.

25 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2023

A Hierarchical Framework for explaining the Cosmic Ray Spectrum using Diffusive Shock Acceleration

The hypothesis that the entire cosmic ray spectrum, from $\lesssim1\,{\rm GeV}$ to $\gtrsim100\,{\rm EeV}$ energy, can be accounted for by diffusive shock acceleration on increasingly large scales is critically examined. Specifically, it is conjectured that Galactic cosmic rays, up to $\sim3\,{\rm PeV}$, are mostly produced by local supernova remnants, from which they escape upstream. These cosmic rays initiate a powerful magnetocentrifugal wind, removing disk mass and angular momentum before passing through the Galactic Wind Termination Shock at a radius $\sim200\,{\rm kpc}$, where they can be re-accelerated to account for observed cosmic rays up to $\sim30\,{\rm PeV}$. The cosmic rays transmitted downstream from more powerful termination shocks associated with other galaxies can be further accelerated at Intergalactic Accretion Shocks to the highest energies observed. In this interpretation, the highest rigidity observed particles are protons; the highest energy particles are heavy nuclei, such as iron. A universal "bootstrap" prescription, coupling the energy density of the magnetic turbulence to that of the resonant cosmic rays, is proposed, initially for the highest energy particles escaping far ahead of the shock front and then scattering, successively, lower energy particles downstream. Observable implications of this general scheme relate to the spectrum, composition and sky distribution of Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays, the extragalactic radio background, the Galactic halo magnetic field and Pevatrons.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2023

Reacceleration of Galactic Cosmic Rays Beyond the Knee at the Termination Shock of a Cosmic-Ray-Driven Galactic Wind

The origin of cosmic rays above the knee in the spectrum is an unsolved problem. We present a wind model in which interstellar gas flows along a non-rotating, expanding flux tube with a changing speed and cross-sectional area. Cosmic rays from Galactic sources, such as supernova remnants, which are coupled to the plasma via Alfvén waves, provide the main pressure source for driving this outflow. These cosmic rays are then subject to diffusive shock reacceleration at the Galactic wind termination shock, which is located at a distance $\sim200\,{\rm kpc}$. Some of the highest-energy reaccelerated particles propagate upstream against the wind and can contribute to the PeV-EeV range of the spectrum. We analyze the conditions under which efficient reacceleration can occur and find that rigidities $\sim$ 10-40 PV can be obtained and that the termination shock may account for half of the proton spectrum measured in IceCube/IceTop experiment. The highest-energy particles that escape downstream from our termination shock, and similar shocks surrounding most galaxies, can be further accelerated by intergalactic shock fronts.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2022

Near-critical supernova outflows and their neutrino signatures

We demonstrate that the neutrino-driven outflows inside exploding core-collapse supernovae possess a special property of near-criticality, that is, they are on the edge of forming termination shocks. We derive a novel criterion for the formation of the shock, in terms of the fundamental parameters of the problem: the neutrino luminosity and energy as well as the properties of the protoneutron star. The criterion provides a unified description of the available numerical results and motivates future simulations. The property of near-criticality makes the neutrino signatures of the termination shocks a sensitive diagnostic of the physical conditions around the PNS several seconds into the explosion. The expected signal at DUNE is found to be statistically significant.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2021

Self-Generated Cosmic-Ray Turbulence Can Explain the Morphology of TeV Halos

Observations have shown that spatially extended "TeV halos" are a common (and potentially generic) feature surrounding young and middle-aged pulsars. However, their morphology is not understood. They are larger than the "compact" region where the stellar remnant dominates the properties of the interstellar medium, but smaller than expected in models of cosmic-ray diffusion through the standard interstellar medium. Several explanations have been proposed, but all have shortcomings. Here, we revisit a class of models where the cosmic-ray gradient produced by the central source induces a streaming stability that "self-confines" the cosmic-ray population. We find that previous studies significantly underpredicted the degree of cosmic-ray confinement and show that corrected models can significantly inhibit cosmic-ray diffusion throughout the TeV halo, especially when similar contributions from the coincident supernova remnant are included.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2021

Celestial-Body Focused Dark Matter Annihilation Throughout the Galaxy

Indirect detection experiments typically measure the flux of annihilating dark matter (DM) particles propagating freely through galactic halos. We consider a new scenario where celestial bodies "focus" DM annihilation events, increasing the efficiency of halo annihilation. In this setup, DM is first captured by celestial bodies, such as neutron stars or brown dwarfs, and then annihilates within them. If DM annihilates to sufficiently long-lived particles, they can escape and subsequently decay into detectable radiation. This produces a distinctive annihilation morphology, which scales as the product of the DM and celestial body densities, rather than as DM density squared. We show that this signal can dominate over the halo annihilation rate in $γ$-ray observations in both the Milky Way Galactic center and globular clusters. We use \textit{Fermi} and H.E.S.S. data to constrain the DM-nucleon scattering cross section, setting powerful new limits down to $\sim10^{-39}~$cm$^2$ for sub-GeV DM using brown dwarfs, which is up to nine orders of magnitude stronger than existing limits. We demonstrate that neutron stars can set limits for TeV-scale DM down to about $10^{-47}~$cm$^2$.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2018

Carter Constant and Superintegrability

Carter constant is a non-trivial conserved quantity of motion of a particle moving in stationary axisymmetric spacetime. In the version of the theorem originally given by Carter, due to the presence of two Killing vectors, the system effectively has two degrees of freedom. We propose an extension to the first version of Carter's theorem to a system having three degrees of freedom to find two functionally independent Carter-like integrals of motion. We further generalize the theorem to a dynamical system with $N$ degrees of freedom. We further study the implications of Carter Constant to Superintegrability and present a different approach to probe a Superintegrable system. Our formalism gives another viewpoint to a Superintegrable system using the simple observation of separable Hamiltonian according to Carter's criteria. We then give some examples by constructing some 2-Dimensional superintegrable systems based on this idea and also show that all 3-D simple classical Superintegrable potentials are also Carter separable.

math-ph↗

arXiv2015

Quark stars admixed with dark matter

Compact stars consisting of massless quark matter and fermionic dark matter are studied by solving the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff equations for two fluids separately. Dark matter is further investigated by incorporating inter-fermionic interactions among the dark matter particles. The properties of stars made of quark matter particles and self-interacting and free dark matter particles are explored by obtaining their mass-radius relations. The regions of stability for such a compact star are determined and it is demonstrated that the maximum stable total mass of such a star decreases approximately linearly with increasing dark matter fraction.

astro-ph.HE↗