Signatures of middle aged, nearby pulsars in the cosmic ray lepton spectrum?

TL;DR

This paper discusses the potential signatures of middle-aged, nearby pulsars in the cosmic ray lepton spectrum, emphasizing current uncertainties in modeling particle acceleration and propagation.

Contribution

It highlights the limitations and uncertainties in current pulsar and cosmic ray propagation models rather than proposing a new explanation for the observed data.

Findings

Current data constrains pulsar and propagation models.

Knowledge about particle acceleration at pulsars is limited.

CR electron and positron data pose challenges to existing models.

Abstract

Recent data reported by the PAMELA and ATIC experiments, as well as cosmic ray lepton results from FERMI and H.E.S.S. collaborations sparked a series of papers explaining these results either by contributions of electron positron pairs to the local interstellar cosmic ray (CR) spectrum by dark matter (DM) or pulsars. Focusing here on pulsars, we argue that at the present, our knowledge about particle acceleration at pulsars as well as of the local Galactic CR propagation is still limited, i.e. the recent results for CR electrons and positrons constrain pulsar and propagation models. We will thus not present another attempt to explain the data by contributions of pulsars to the local CR lepton flux but rather to highlight the caveats in doing so.