Generalized statistical mechanics of cosmic rays

TL;DR

This paper introduces a generalized statistical mechanics model incorporating temperature fluctuations to explain cosmic ray spectra, deriving Tsallis statistics and predicting spectral indices consistent with experimental data.

Contribution

It presents a novel statistical mechanics framework that accounts for local temperature variations in cosmic ray creation, leading to accurate spectral predictions.

Findings

Derived entropic index q=11/9 at high energies

Predicted effective temperature (5/9)T_H matches observations

Model aligns well with measured cosmic ray energy spectrum

Abstract

We consider a generalized statistical mechanics model for the creation process of cosmic rays which takes into account local temperature fluctuations. This model yields Tsallis statistics for the cosmic ray spectrum. It predicts an entropic index q given by q=11/9 at largest energies (equivalent to a spectral index of alpha=5/2), and an effective temperature given by (5/9)T_H, where kT_H approximately equal to 180 MeV is the Hagedorn temperature measured in collider experiments. Our theoretically obtained formula is in very good agreement with the experimentally measured energy spectrum of primary cosmic rays.