Injection mechanism for cosmic ray acceleration

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Injection mechanism for cosmic ray acceleration

Galeev, A.A. / Sagdeev, R.Z. / Shapiro, V.D.

Abstract The quasilinear theory of MHD waves excitation by cosmic rays accelerated at a front of supernova shock has been constructed. It is shown that the energetic particles excite the waves propagating from the shock front, the intensity and the spectrum of these waves is obtained. The role of nonlinear Landau damping in the formation of such spectrum has been analysed. The diffusive scattering length of the high energy particles in the preshock region has been calculated and it is shown with the help of these formulae that the effective Fermi acceleration at the shock front is possible upto the values of the relativistic factor = 10⁴ - 10⁵. The injection mechanism for cosmic rays acceleration has been proposed. It is based on stochastic Fermi acceleration of the thermal plasma by MHD waves excited in the preshock region. Different possibilities for wave phase velocity dispersion needed for stochastic Fermi acceleration are analysed, those are the excitation of the oblique magnetosonic waves as well as the excitation of parallel Alfven waves propagating in opposite directions. The distribution function of the suprathermal particles accelerated by MHD waves is obtained, the cosmic rays density as well as the lower boundary of their energy spectrum realised in the proposed mechanism are also calculated.