Giada Peron | The properties of Galactic cosmic rays unveiled by gamma-ray observations

Friday 15 Dec 2023, 10:30 → 12:00 Europe/Berlin

SR 05 (Villa)

Cosmic rays (CR) are charged high-energetic particles that permeate the Galaxy and arrive at Earth from any direction. The accumulation and effective mixture of these relativistic particles during their propagation through the interstellar magnetic fields results in the formation of the so-called "sea" of galactic Cosmic Rays (CRs).  As a consequence, tracing the origin of these particles can’t be done by direct measurements and should rely on observations of secondary neutral particles, such as gamma rays and neutrinos, which travel unaffected from the CR interaction regions to us. I will present the investigation that we performed using gamma-ray data on the properties of Galactic cosmic rays. I will give some examples on observed accelerators, detected runaway particles and on molecular clouds, which are considered the main CR ‘barometer’ of the Galaxy, providing a dense target for CR hadronic interactions. I will focus on the results obtained with the Fermi Large area telescope and will give some prospects for observation with the current and future ground based facilities.