Cosmic-ray electrons and galactic radio emission—a conflict?

Abstract

Many attempts have been made in the past to deduce information of astrophysical importance from a study of the galactic non-thermal radio continuum in relation to cosmic-ray electrons observed in the neighbourhood of the Earth (refs 1 and 2 and references therein). These investigations were carried out using the cosmic ray electron data obtained from a single experiment or by making use of an average spectrum derived from the world data, although it is known that the flux values observed by different experimenters in any energy band differ by as much as a factor of 4. This in turn has led to conflicting conclusions to be drawn from the analyses of different authors. In this paper, we present a different approach for analysing the observational data based on arguments of internal consistency between each measured electron spectrum and the magnetic field strength and the dimension of the radio-emitting region required to explain the radio observations. Such an analysis makes it possible to highlight the inconsistencies associated with some of the electron measurements and permits certain inferences of cosmic ray and astrophysical interest.