Galactic Cosmic Ray Nuclei as a Tool for Astroparticle Physics

TL;DR

This paper reviews how cosmic ray nuclei measurements inform galactic physics and astroparticle questions, using a semi-analytical diffusion model constrained by observed ratios to study various species and potential dark matter signals.

Contribution

It introduces a semi-analytical two-zone diffusion model constrained by B/C ratio data to analyze cosmic ray propagation and related astroparticle phenomena.

Findings

Constraints on propagation parameters from B/C ratio

Predicted fluxes of antiprotons and antideuterons from dark matter

Analysis of the spatial origin of cosmic ray species

Abstract

Cosmic Ray nuclei in the energy range 100 MeV/nuc - 100 GeV/nuc provide crucial information about the physical properties of the Galaxy. They can also be used to answer questions related to astroparticle physics. This paper reviews the results obtained in this direction, with a strong bias towards the work done by the authors at {\sc lapth}, {\sc isn} and {\sc iap}. The propagation of these nuclei is studied quantitatively in the framework of a semi-analytical two-zone diffusion model taking into account the effect of galactic wind, diffuse reacceleration and energy losses. The parameters of this model are severely constrained by an analysis of the observed B/C ratio. These constraints are then used to study other species such as radioactive species and light antinuclei. Finally, we focus on the astroparticle subject and we study the flux of antiprotons and antideuterons that might be due to neutralino annihilations or primordial black hole evaporation. The question of the spatial origin of all these species is also addressed.