Energy spectra of gamma-rays, electrons and neutrinos produced at interactions of relativistic protons with low energy radiation

TL;DR

This paper presents simple analytical formulas for the energy spectra of gamma-rays, electrons, and neutrinos resulting from relativistic proton interactions with low-energy radiation, aiding cosmic ray source modeling.

Contribution

It introduces new analytical parametrizations for particle energy distributions from proton-photon interactions, based on numerical simulations and simplified formalisms.

Findings

Accurate analytical formulas for photon, electron, and neutrino spectra.

Validated formulas against Monte Carlo simulations.

Applicable to cosmic proton accelerators in radiation-rich environments.

Abstract

We derived simple analytical parametrizations for energy distributions of photons, electrons, and neutrinos produced in interactions of relativistic protons with an isotropic monochromatic radiation field. The results on photomeson processes are obtained using numerical simulations of proton-photon interactions based on the public available Monte-Carlo code SOPHIA. For calculations of energy spectra of electrons and positrons from the pair production (Bethe-Heitler) process we suggest a simple formalism based on the well-known differential cross-section of the process in the rest frame of the proton. The analytical presentations of energy distributions of photons and leptons provide a simple but accurate approach for calculations of broad-band energy spectra of gamma-rays and neutrinos in cosmic proton accelerators located in radiation dominated environments.