Acceleration and Transport Processes of Cosmic Rays

Abstract

Essential to an explanation of most phenomena of high-energy astrophysics is the understanding of the physics of the acceleration and transport of the energetic charged particles, i.e. the cosmic rays. The in-situ study of these transport and acceleration processes in interplanetary space offers a unique opportunity to test our conceptual understanding of cosmic ray dynamics, and thus provides an increased confidence in the applicability of the developed concepts. The transport and acceleration of cosmic rays in interplanetary space are quite similar to those in other cosmic objects. Quite generally, the cosmic ray particles have to propagate in a collisionless, high-conductive, magnetized and tenuous background plasma consisting mainly of protons and electrons. Very often the energy density of cosmic ray particles is comparable to that of the background medium, the magnetic field and the convective motion of the medium. As a consequence, the electromagnetic fields in the system are severely influenced by the cosmic ray particles, and the description of cosmic ray transport and acceleration is more complex than solving the equation of motion of charged cosmic ray test particles in a fixed and given electromagnetic field (see the discussion in Chap. 8).KeywordsTransport EquationSource DistributionMomentum DiffusionMomentum ProblemAdiabatic DecelerationThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.