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A Minimal Interpretation of the Galactic Cosmic-Ray Proton and Helium Spectra from GeV to PeV Energies

  • Authors: Felix Aharonian, Bing Theodore Zhang

Felix Aharonian and Bing Theodore Zhang 2026 The Astrophysical Journal 1006 .

  • Provider: AAS Journals

Caption: Figure 5.

CR helium spectrum multiplied by E2.75, with fit curves compared to measurements from AMS-02 (M. Aguilar et al. 2017), DAMPE (F. Alemanno et al. 2026), and LHAASO (Z. Cao et al. 2026). The blue and red curves represent the contributions of the first (I) and second (II) CR components, respectively. Two alternative assumptions for the extrapolation of the second component toward low energies are shown: (a) a pure power-law extrapolation (curves I and II) and (b) a scenario with low-energy hardening of the second component (curves ﹩{{\rm{I}}}^{{\prime} }﹩ and ﹩{{\rm{II}}}^{{\prime} }﹩), as discussed in the text. The solid and dashed black curves show the resulting total helium spectrum (I + II) for the (a) and (b) scenarios, respectively. The inset highlights the spectral structure in the multi-TeV energy range.

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