The Milagro anticenter hot spots: cosmic rays from the Geminga supernova ?

Understand

The Milagro experiment has announced the discovery of an excess flux of TeV cosmic rays from the general direction of the heliotail, also close to the Galactic anticenter.

• We investigate the hypothesis that the excess cosmic rays were produced in the SN explosion that gave birth to the Geminga pulsar.
• The assumptions underlying our proposed scenario are that the Geminga supernova occurred about 3.4 10^5 years ago (as indicated by the spin down timescale), that a burst of cosmic rays was injected with total energy 10^49 erg (i.e., about 1% of a typical SN output), and that the Geminga pulsar was born with a positive radial velocity of 100--200 km s^-1.
• We find that our hypothesis is consistent with the available information.