Steffen Krakau

Bochum

Explanation of the spectral hardening of relativistic Galactic cosmic ray protons(pdf)

The transport of Galactic cosmic rays is investigated in the energy range of $70\mbox{ GeV}\leq E\leq 10^6\mbox{ GeV}$ including the newly calculated proton loss rate due to pion production (Krakau and Schlickeiser 2015). The break in the energy loss rate at about 200 GeV leads to a hardening from low to high energies in the differential number density of about $\sim E^{0.1}$. This break is confirmed by measurements of different cosmic ray experiments.