Cosmic-ray generated bubbles around their sources

TL;DR

Cosmic rays escaping their sources generate magnetic instabilities that create large, low-diffusivity bubbles around the sources, impacting cosmic ray propagation and emission signatures.

Contribution

This study demonstrates through simulations that cosmic-ray streaming instabilities form expansive, low-diffusivity bubbles around sources, a novel insight into cosmic ray environment shaping.

Findings

Bubbles can reach 10-50 pc in radius before pressure equilibrium.

Self-generated magnetic fields significantly suppress cosmic ray diffusion.

Extended regions influence gamma-ray and synchrotron emission morphology.

Abstract

Cosmic rays are thought to escape their sources streaming along the local magnetic field lines. We show that this phenomenon generally leads to the excitation of both resonant and non-resonant streaming instabilities. The self-generated magnetic fluctuations induce particle diffusion in extended regions around the source, so that cosmic rays build up a large pressure gradient. By means of two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) hybrid particle-in-cell simulations, we show that such a pressure gradient excavates a cavity around the source and leads to the formation of a cosmic-ray dominated bubble, inside which diffusivity is strongly suppressed. Based on the trends extracted from self-consistent simulations, we estimate that, in the absence of severe damping of the self-generated magnetic fields, the bubble should keep expanding until pressure balance with the surrounding medium is reached, corresponding to a radius of $\sim 10-50$ pc. The implications of the formation of these regions of low diffusivity for sources of Galactic cosmic rays are discussed. Special care is devoted to estimating the self-generated diffusion coefficient and the grammage that cosmic rays might accumulate in the bubbles before moving into the interstellar medium. Based on the results of 3D simulations, general considerations on the morphology of the $\gamma$-ray and synchrotron emission from these extended regions also are outlined.