The Galactic Diffuse Gamma-ray Spectrum from Cosmic-ray Proton Interactions

A new calculation of the Galactic diffuse gamma-ray spectrum from the decay of secondary particles produced by interactions of cosmic-ray protons with interstellar matter is presented. The calculation utilizes the modern Monte Carlo event generators, Hadrin, Fritiof and Pythia, which simulate high-energy proton-proton collisions and are widely used in studies of nuclear and particle physics, in addition to scaling calculation. This study is motivated by the result on the Galactic diffuse gamma-ray flux observed by the EGRET detector on the Compton Gamma-ray Observatory, which indicates an excess above about 1 GeV of the observed intensity compared with a model prediction. The prediction is based on cosmic-ray interactions with interstellar matter, in which secondary pion productions are treated by a simple model. With the improved interaction model used here, however, the diffuse gamma-ray flux agrees rather well with previous calculations within uncertainties, which mainly come from the unobservable demodulated cosmic-ray spectrum in interstellar space. As a possible solution to the excess flux, flatter spectra of cosmic-ray protons have been tested and we found that the power-law spectrum with an index of about −(2.4 ∼ 2.5) gives a better fit to the EGRET data, though the spectrum is not explained completely. Subject headings: cosmic rays — gamma rays — interstellar medium