Origin of Small-Scale Anisotropies in Galactic Cosmic Rays

TL;DR

This paper reviews the observed anisotropies in Galactic cosmic rays, highlighting the challenge of explaining small-scale anisotropies within standard diffusion models and discussing various proposed explanations.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of experimental findings and theoretical models addressing the origin of small-scale cosmic ray anisotropies.

Findings

Large-scale anisotropies align with diffusion predictions

Small-scale anisotropies are difficult to explain with standard models

Multiple models have been proposed to account for small-scale features

Abstract

The arrival directions of Galactic cosmic rays (CRs) are highly isotropic. This is expected from the presence of turbulent magnetic fields in our Galactic environment that repeatedly scatter charged CRs during propagation. However, various CR observatories have identified weak anisotropies of various angular sizes and with relative intensities of up to a level of 1 part in 1,000. Whereas large-scale anisotropies are generally predicted by standard diffusion models, the appearance of small-scale anisotropies down to an angular size of 10 degrees is surprising. In this review, we summarise the current experimental situation for both the large-scale and small-scale anisotropies. We address some of the issues in comparing different experimental results and remaining questions in interpreting the observed large-scale anisotropies. We then review the standard diffusive picture and its difficulty in producing the small-scale anisotropies. Having set the stage, we review the various ideas and models put forward for explaining the small-scale anisotropies.