The stationary non-equilibrium plasma of cosmic-ray electrons and positrons

Roman Tomaschitz

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2016, vol. 451, issue C, 456-464

Abstract: The statistical properties of the two-component plasma of cosmic-ray electrons and positrons measured by the AMS-02 experiment on the International Space Station and the HESS array of imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes are analyzed. Stationary non-equilibrium distributions defining the relativistic electron–positron plasma are derived semi-empirically by performing spectral fits to the flux data and reconstructing the spectral number densities of the electronic and positronic components in phase space. These distributions are relativistic power-law densities with exponential cutoff, admitting an extensive entropy variable and converging to the Maxwell–Boltzmann or Fermi–Dirac distributions in the non-relativistic limit. Cosmic-ray electrons and positrons constitute a classical (low-density high-temperature) plasma due to the low fugacity in the quantized partition function. The positron fraction is assembled from the flux densities inferred from least-squares fits to the electron and positron spectra and is subjected to test by comparing with the AMS-02 flux ratio measured in the GeV interval. The calculated positron fraction extends to TeV energies, predicting a broad spectral peak at about 1 TeV followed by exponential decay.

Keywords: Stationary non-equilibrium distributions; Cosmic-ray electron–positron plasma; Relativistic statistical ensembles; Power-law densities with exponential cutoff; Nonthermal ensemble averaging; Classical & quantum partitions with extensive entropy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:451:y:2016:i:c:p:456-464

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2016.01.091

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