The influence of the 3D Galactic gas structure on cosmic-ray transport and γ-ray emission

Abstract

Cosmic rays (CRs) play a major role in the dynamics of the interstellar medium (ISM). Their interactions and transport ionize, heat, and push the ISM thereby coupling different regions of it. The spatial distribution of CRs depends on the distribution of their sources as well as the ISM constituents they interact with, such as gas, starlight, and magnetic fields. Particularly, gas influences CR fluxes and $\gamma$-ray emission. We illustrate the influence of realistic and largely structured 3D gas distributions on CR transport and $\gamma$-ray emission, by studying their correlation using the PICARD code and multiple samples of recent 3D reconstructions of the HI and H2 Galactic gas constituents. We adjust the diffusion coefficient $D_{xx}$ and Alfvén speed $v_{\text{A}}$ to reproduce local measurements of B/C abundances and find that these parameters depend non-linearly on the local distribution of gas. When simulating CR transport, the distributions of CR fluxes exhibit energy-dependent structures that vary for all CR species due to their corresponding loss processes. Regions of enhanced secondary (primary) species are spatially correlated (anti-correlated) with the gas density. Furthermore, we show that the morphology of gas clouds alone impacts CR flux predictions. For $\gamma$-ray emission, we observe a high sensitivity of the $\gamma$-ray emissivities to gas structures, as these determine the spatial distributions of hadronic interactions and bremsstrahlung. This way, we have for the first time calculated how well-defined uncertainties in a structured gas model propagate to CR transport and $\gamma$-ray emission.