Speaker
Dr
Orlando Elena
(Stanford University/KIPAC)
Description
The importance of inverse-Compton emission from interactions of cosmic-ray
electrons and positrons on the photon field of the Sun (and also individual stars)
was first realized around 2006.
Following the discovery of solar emission from the quiet sun in EGRET
data, now Fermi-LAT is so sensitive that even such weak emission can be
detected with high significance and studied in detail. This potentially
allows the propagation of leptons in the inner heliosphere to be
investigated, which is otherwise impossible.
Solar inverse Compton is also important as a background over the entire
sky to be accounted for in studies of Galactic and extragalactic gamma-ray
emission.
Hence, a general software package that provides a flexible model of
the solar emission is useful to assist in interpreting such data. We
present here our C++ software to compute inverse-Compton scattering from
the heliosphere, as well as the photospheres of stars. It includes a formulation of
modulation in the heliosphere, but can be used for any user-defined
modulation model. It outputs profiles, spectra and differential flux to
FITS files in a variety of forms for convenient use.
The software is publicly available and is
under continuing development, taking into account updated observations in
gamma rays and cosmic rays. It uses general-purpose inverse-Compton
routines with other features like energy loss rates and emissivity for any
user-defined target photon and lepton spectra.
We will present the software and show examples of predictions for the
solar inverse Compton, pointing out interesting features which should be
the object of future data analyses.
Primary authors
Dr
Orlando Elena
(Stanford University/KIPAC)
Dr
Strong Andy
(MPE Garching)
