Structure Formation Cosmic Rays

Shocks that arise during the process of large scale structure formations are particle acceleration sites (provided that there is even a small magnetic field present). This will inevitably give rise to so called Structure Formation Cosmic Rays (SFCRs). The implications of having such cosmological cosmic-ray populations are many: the source of non-thermal pressure, preheating, ionization, pre-Galactic lithium production, gamma-ray production. However, they are difficult to probe. We have established the connection between cosmic-ray lithium production (α_cr+α→^6,7Li+...) and "pionic" gamma-ray production (pcr+p→π⁰ →2γ). We have used this lithium-gamma-ray connection in a model-independent way to constrain the pre-Galactic lithium production by SFCRs.

Reference: Fields, B. D., & Prodanović, T. 2005, ApJ 623, 877 (get from astro-ph/ )