Abstract
Atomic nuclei appearing in cosmic rays (CRs) are typically classified as primary or secondary. However, a better understanding of their origin and propagation properties is still necessary. We analyse the flux of primary (He, C, O) and secondary nuclei (Li, Be, B) detected with rigidity (momentum/charge) between 2 GV and 3 TV by the alpha magnetic spectrometer on the International Space Station. We show that q-exponential distribution functions, as motivated by generalized versions of statistical mechanics with temperature fluctuations, provide excellent fits for the measured flux of all nuclei considered. Primary and secondary fluxes reveal a universal dependence on kinetic energy per nucleon for which the underlying energy distribution functions are solely distinguished by their effective degrees of freedom. All given spectra are characterized by a universal mean temperature parameter ∼200 MeV which agrees with the Hagedorn temperature. Our analysis suggests that QCD scattering processes together with nonequilibrium temperature fluctuations imprint universally onto the measured CR spectra, and produce a similar shape of energy spectra as high energy collider experiments on the Earth.
Highlights
A fundamental challenge of current cosmic ray (CR) research is to understand the origin of highly energetic cosmic rays (CRs), their abundance in terms of different particle types, and to identify the processes at work for acceleration and propagation
Our analysis suggests that QCD scattering processes together with nonequilibrium temperature fluctuations imprint universally onto the measured CR spectra, and produce a similar shape of energy spectra as high energy collider experiments on the Earth
We provide excellent fits for the measured alpha magnetic spectrometer (AMS) spectra of primary (He, C, O) and secondary CRs (Li, Be, B) using a simple superstatistical model
Summary
A fundamental challenge of current cosmic ray (CR) research is to understand the origin of highly energetic CRs, their abundance in terms of different particle types, and to identify the processes at work for acceleration and propagation. Since the flux distribution as a function of energy in CRs does not decay exponentially, it is reasonable not to use BG statistics but rather GSM, which has been successfully applied to CRs before in [12,13,14] and applied to particle collisions in LHC experiments [15,16,17] Other applications of this superstatistical nonequilibrium approach are Lagrangian [18] and defect turbulence [19], fluctuations in wind velocity and its persistence statistics [20, 21], fluctuations in the power grid frequency [22, 23] and air pollution statistics [24].
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