Pulsars as the Sources of High Energy Cosmic Ray Positrons

Understand

Recent results from the PAMELA satellite indicate the presence of a large flux of positrons (relative to electrons) in the cosmic ray spectrum between approximately 10 and 100 GeV.

• As annihilating dark matter particles in many models are predicted to contribute to the cosmic ray positron spectrum in this energy range, a great deal of interest has resulted from this observation.
• Here, we consider pulsars (rapidly spinning, magnetized neutron stars) as an alternative source of this signal.
• After calculating the contribution to the cosmic ray positron and electron spectra from pulsars, we find that the spectrum observed by PAMELA could plausibly originate from such sources.