Double Pair Production by Ultra High Energy Cosmic Ray Photons

TL;DR

This paper uses detailed simulations to assess how double electron-positron pair production affects ultra high energy cosmic ray photon propagation, revealing significant differences from earlier rough estimates at extreme energies.

Contribution

It provides a refined analysis of DPP effects on cosmic ray photon spectra at energies of thousands of EeV, improving previous estimates.

Findings

DPP significantly alters photon spectrum predictions at ultra high energies.

Refined calculations show larger effects than previous rough estimates.

Implications for cosmic ray models at extreme energies.

Abstract

With use of CompHEP package we've made the detailed estimate of the influence of double e+e- pair production by photons (DPP) on the propagation of ultra high energy electromagnetic cascade. We show that in the models in which cosmic ray photons energy reaches few thousand EeV refined DPP analysis may lead to substantial difference in predicted photon spectrum compared to previous rough estimates.