The Energy Spectra and Anisotropies of Cosmic Rays

The existing paradigm of the origin of Galactic cosmic rays places strong supernovae shocks as the acceleration site for this material. However, although the EGRET gamma-ray telescope has reported evidence for GeV gamma rays from some supernovae, it is still unclear if the signal is produced by locally intense cosmic rays. Although non-thermal X-ray emissions have been detected from supernova remnants and interpreted as synchrotron emission from locally intense electrons at energies up to 100 TeV, the inferred source energy spectral slopes seem much steeper than the electron source spectrum observed through direct measurements. It remains the case that simple energetics provide the most convincing argument that supernovae power the bulk of cosmic rays. Two characteristics which can be used to investigate this issue at high energy are the source energy spectra and the source composition derived from direct measurements.