Speaker
Description
Multi-TeV cosmic rays (CRs) are trapped within the Milky Way by the galactic magnetic field and diffuse through the interstellar medium (ISM) for up to a hundred million years, losing energy via various processes. This leads to a "sea" of high-energy particles around the galactic plane, colloquially known as the TeV CR sea. This sea is poorly understood and presents a challenge for modern day and future imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes such as the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA), which must subtract this background emission carefully to reveal discrete and localised sources. To address this, we utilise the three-dimensional simulation software GALPROP to vary the CR accelerator distributions in the Milky Way, adjusting the ratio between those located in the spiral arms and the galactic disk. Understanding the spatial distributions of CR accelerators in the Milky Way is the first step in creating a more detailed picture of the high energy dynamics within our galaxy, improving our understanding of the TeV CR sea. A detailed, quantitative analysis of the TeV CR sea predicted by GALPROP is performed, and for the first time these predictions will be applied to results from the HESS TeV galactic plane survey, providing the first comparison between CR diffusion models and the results from ground based gamma-ray telescopes. These results are also compared to the proposed sensitivity of the 10-year CTA galactic plane survey plans.
