The 2009 Fermi Symposium

Pulsar Contribution to Cosmic-ray Electrons and Positrons

Dmitry V. Malyshev

Abstract:

Recently several cosmic ray experiments detected an excess of electrons and positrons between approximately 10 GeV and 1 TeV. It is known that pulsars can accelerate electrons and positrons and could be responsible for this excess. We emphasize the importance of acceleration at the termination shock between the pulsar and its wind nebula provided that the acceleration in the pulsar magnetosphere is insufficient to produce the required spectrum up to several hundred GeV. We show that pulsars can explain the excess for a reasonable range of parameters describing the pulsars and the propagation in the interstellar medium. Typical fluxes from individual pulsars and the pulsars in the ATNF catalog are computed and compared with the observations.