Beyond Diffusion: A Causality-Preserving Model for Cosmic Ray Propagation

TL;DR

This paper introduces a causality-preserving formalism for relativistic cosmic ray propagation that accurately models both diffusion and ballistic regimes, improving upon traditional diffusion approximations.

Contribution

The authors develop a new formalism based on photon scattering solutions to accurately describe relativistic cosmic ray propagation while maintaining causality.

Findings

Provides formulas valid in both diffusion and ballistic regimes

Applicable to PeV cosmic rays and ultra-high energy CRs

Enables accurate modeling of gamma-ray halos around pulsars

Abstract

We propose a brand-new formalism for the propagation of relativistic cosmic ray (CR) particles. The propagation of CRs has often been described using the diffusion approximation, which has the drawback that the propagation speed of CRs near the source exceeds the speed of light. By applying the analytic solution of the time-dependent distribution function of photons propagating while undergoing scattering, which we recently proposed, we have succeeded in formulating the propagation of relativistic CRs while preserving causality. The obtained formulae give correct expressions both in the diffusion regime and the ballistic regime, as well as the transition between them. They can be applied to the propagation of PeV CRs around their sources (PeVatrons), the propagation of ultra-high energy CRs, and the description of TeV gamma-ray halos around pulsars.