Nonextensive thermal sources of cosmic rays?

TL;DR

This paper proposes a nonextensive statistical model to explain the power-law spectrum and knee feature of cosmic rays, linking temperature fluctuations in sources to observed composition and spectral structure.

Contribution

It introduces a novel nonextensive statistical framework for cosmic ray production, connecting temperature fluctuations with spectral features and composition.

Findings

The model reproduces the power-law spectrum of cosmic rays.

It explains the knee structure as a change in fluctuation patterns.

The predicted chemical composition aligns with observations.

Abstract

The energy spectrum of cosmic rays (CR) exhibits power-like behavior with a very characteristic "knee" structure. We consider a possibility that such a spectrum could be generated by some specific nonstatistical temperature fluctuations in the source of CR with the "knee" structure reflecting an abrupt change of the pattern of such fluctuations. This would result in a generalized nonextensive statistical model for the production of CR. The possible physical mechanisms leading to these effects are discussed together with the resulting chemical composition of the CR, which follows the experimentally observed abundance of nuclei.