Ponente
Descripción
The mysterious sources of high energy cosmic rays must be able to explain the power-law flux in energy as well as the nuclear composition changes at spectral breaks. Interacting supernovae may be able to explain these observed features. We build on a self-consistent model of the shock formed between supernova ejecta and the circumstellar medium by accounting for the composition of accelerated nuclei. IIn supernovae, with more massive circumstellar media compared to other types, are able to accelerate nuclei to super-PeV energies. We show that the flux and spectral shape from interacting supernovae agree well with the cosmic rays observed recently by experiments like LHAASO, TA, and IceTop between ~1e16 and ~5e17 eV. We also take into account the result that partially ionized nuclei can be preferentially injected, based on their mass and charge, to show that an initially solar composition before injection can explain the increasing average mass number at these energies. Finally, we discuss connections between cosmic ray acceleration and multi-messenger astrophysics.
