Reconciling cosmic ray diffusion with Galactic magnetic field models

TL;DR

This paper investigates cosmic ray diffusion in the Galactic magnetic field, finding that isotropic turbulence models overpredict secondary nuclei and proposing that anisotropic diffusion better explains observations.

Contribution

It introduces a model of cosmic ray propagation that accounts for anisotropic magnetic fields, resolving discrepancies with isotropic turbulence assumptions.

Findings

Isotropic turbulent fields lead to excessive residence times for cosmic rays.

Anisotropic magnetic fields reduce the number of sources contributing to local cosmic rays.

Cosmic ray diffusion is strongly influenced by the regular component of the Galactic magnetic field.

Abstract

We calculate the diffusion coefficients of charged cosmic rays (CR) propagating in regular and turbulent magnetic fields. If the magnetic field is dominated by an isotropic turbulent component, we find that CRs reside too long in the Galactic disc. As a result, CRs overproduce secondary nuclei like boron for any reasonable values of the strength and the coherence length of an isotropic turbulent field. We conclude therefore that the propagation of Galactic CRs has to be strongly anisotropic because of a sufficiently strong regular field and/or of an anisotropy in the turbulent field. As a consequence, the number of sources contributing to the local CR flux is reduced by a factor ${\cal O}(100)$ compared to the case of isotropic CR diffusion.