The propagation of cosmic rays from the vicinity of the galactic centre

Abstract

There is now evidence that there may be a strong source of cosmic ray particles in the general direction of the Galactic Centre. The likelihood is that the observed particles are neutrons with energies of about 10^18 eV. Associated with the production of those neutrons, we would expect that large numbers of charged cosmic rays would also be produced, and we investigate here the directional properties of those charged particles as they may be observed at the distance of the Earth from the Galactic Centre. We follow the propagation of such particles through a simple Galactic magnetic field model with both a turbulent and a regular field to determine what field properties most affect the observed beam. It appears that the turbulent field component is crucial to any resulting charged particle observations.