Cosmogenic gamma-rays and the composition of cosmic rays

TL;DR

This paper explores the potential of detecting ultra-high energy cosmic ray sources through their cosmogenic gamma-ray emissions, which are produced during cosmic ray propagation and are more stable indicators than neutrinos.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of cosmogenic gamma-ray production from UHECRs and compares its robustness to neutrino signals, highlighting its potential for source detection.

Findings

Cosmogenic gamma-ray signals are more robust than neutrino signals for source identification.

Single steady UHE CR sources produce detectable gamma-ray emissions.

Diffuse gamma-ray emission can be used to study the collective contribution of extragalactic sources.

Abstract

We discuss the prospects of detecting the sources of ultra-high energy (UHE) cosmic ray (CR) nuclei via their emission of cosmogenic gamma-rays in the GeV to TeV energy range. These gamma-rays result from electromagnetic cascades initiated by high energy photons, electrons and positrons that are emitted by CRs during their propagation in the cosmic radiation background and are independent of the simultaneous emission of gamma-rays in the vicinity of the source. The corresponding production power by UHE CR nuclei (with mass number A and charge Z) is dominated by pion photo-production (~ A) and Bethe-Heitler pair production (~ Z^2). We show that the cosmogenic gamma-ray signal from a single steady UHE CR source is typically more robust with respect to variations of the source composition and injection spectrum than the accompanying signal of cosmogenic neutrinos. We study the diffuse emission from the sum of extragalactic CR sources as well as the point source emission of the closest sources.