Numerical Propagation of Cosmic Rays in the Galaxy

TL;DR

This paper develops a Monte Carlo simulation to model cosmic ray proton propagation in the Galaxy at energies above 1 PeV, analyzing effects like diffusion and drifts across various magnetic field models.

Contribution

It introduces a Monte Carlo approach to simulate cosmic ray propagation and compares different Galactic magnetic field models for better understanding of cosmic ray containment.

Findings

Containment times vary significantly across models

Certain magnetic field configurations better match low energy data

Monte Carlo method effectively captures complex propagation effects

Abstract

We present a Monte-Carlo (MC) calculation of the propagation of cosmic ray protons in the Galaxy for energies above 1 PeV. We discuss the relative strengths of competing effects such as parallel/perpendicular diffusion and drifts in toy models of the Galaxy. We compare our estimates with the results of the MC calculation for the toy models and then we apply the MC calculation to a few more realistic models of the Galactic magnetic field. We study the containment times in different models of the magnetic field in order to understand which one may be consistent with the low energy data.