Testing Cosmic-Ray Propagation Scenarios with AMS-02 and Voyager Data

Abstract

AMS-02 on board the International Space Station provides precise measurements of cosmic rays (CR) near Earth, while Voyager measures CRs in the local interstellar medium, beyond the effects of solar modulation. Based on these data, we test and revise various CR propagation scenarios under standard assumptions: pure diffusion, diffusion with convection, diffusion with reacceleration, and diffusion with reacceleration and convection. We report on the scenarios’ performance against CR measurements, aiming to limit the number of model parameters as much as possible. For each scenario, we find parameters that are able to reproduce Voyager and AMS-02 data for the entire energy band for all the CR species tested. Above several GV, we observe a similar injection spectral index for He and C, with He harder than H. Some scenarios previously disfavored are now reconsidered. For example, contrary to usual assumptions, we find that the pure diffusion scenario does not need an upturn in the diffusion coefficient at low energy, while it needs the same number of low-energy breaks in the injection spectrum as diffusive-reacceleration scenarios. We show that scenarios differ in modeled spectra of one order of magnitude for positrons at ∼1 GeV and of a factor of 2 for antiprotons at several GV. The force-field approximation describes well the AMS-02 and Voyager spectra analyzed, except antiprotons. We confirm the ∼10 GeV excess in the antiproton spectrum for all scenarios. Also, for all scenarios, the resulting modulation should be stronger for positrons than for nuclei, with reacceleration models requiring much larger modulation.