What Can GLAST Say about the Origin of Galactic Cosmic Rays?
Jonathan F. Ormes, Seth Digel, Igor Moskalenko, and Alexander Moiseev,
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
and Roger Williamson
Stanford University, Palo Alto, California
on behalf of the GLAST collaboration
Gamma rays in the band from 30 MeV to 300 GeV, used in combination with direct
measurements and with data from radio and X-ray bands, provide a powerful tool
for studying the origin of galactic cosmic rays. Gamma-ray Large Area Space
Telescope (GLAST) will map supernova remnants and the galactic diffuse gamma
radiation from the collision of cosmic rays with gas and dust on angular scales
as fine as 10-20 arcmin. GLAST will be able to look for signatures of the
acceleration of cosmic-ray nuclei by looking at the spatial and spectral
structure of the gamma rays from supernova, molecular clouds and other galactic
concentrations of matter. GLAST can study the acceleration of energetic
particles in supernova shocks, their transport in the interstellar medium and
their penetration into clouds.