Pith Number

pith:3T7YKCPU

pith:2026:3T7YKCPUELJO462OIGF6BYSZKJ

not attested not anchored not stored refs pending

A Minimal Interpretation of the Galactic Cosmic-Ray Proton and Helium Spectra from GeV to PeV Energies

Bing Theodore Zhang, Felix Aharonian

A two-population model explains the complex galactic cosmic-ray proton and helium spectra from GeV to PeV energies.

arxiv:2602.08223 v3 · 2026-02-09 · astro-ph.HE · astro-ph.SR

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\pithnumber{3T7YKCPUELJO462OIGF6BYSZKJ}

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Record completeness

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2 Internet Archive

3 Author claim open · sign in to claim

4 Citations open

5 Replications open

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The bundle contains the canonical record plus signed events. A mirror can host it anywhere and recompute the same current state with the deterministic merge algorithm.

Claims

C1strongest claim

We propose a minimal two-cosmic-ray-population framework that consistently accounts for the observed spectra of protons and helium across six decades in energy. In this scenario, the spectral complexity arises from a transition between two Galactic CR populations in the 10 TeV-1 PeV energy range.

C2weakest assumption

The assumption that the observed spectral features arise purely from a transition between two galactic populations with the stated sharp cutoff at tens of TeV for low-energy protons and 6.5 PeV exponential cutoff for the high-energy component, without any contribution from nearby sources or non-standard propagation effects.

C3one line summary

A minimal two-component cosmic-ray model accounts for proton and helium spectra from GeV to PeV by transitioning between a low-energy population with a sharp cutoff at tens of TeV and a high-energy population with an exponential cutoff at 6.5 PeV.

Formal links

1 machine-checked theorem link

Cited by

1 paper in Pith

Elemental cosmic ray spectra reveal two populations of Galactic sources and an immediate transition to an extragalactic component after the knee

Receipt and verification

First computed	2026-06-26T01:15:49.275601Z
Builder	pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1
Signature	Pith Ed25519 (`pith-v1-2026-05`) · public key
Schema	pith-number/v1.0

Canonical hash

dcff8509f422d2ee7b4e418be0e259525424d025e3e951b4a06dce69069173c3

Aliases

arxiv: 2602.08223 · arxiv_version: 2602.08223v3 · doi: 10.48550/arxiv.2602.08223 · pith_short_12: 3T7YKCPUELJO · pith_short_16: 3T7YKCPUELJO462O · pith_short_8: 3T7YKCPU

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Verify this Pith Number yourself

curl -sH 'Accept: application/ld+json' https://pith.science/pith/3T7YKCPUELJO462OIGF6BYSZKJ \
  | jq -c '.canonical_record' \
  | python3 -c "import sys,json,hashlib; b=json.dumps(json.loads(sys.stdin.read()), sort_keys=True, separators=(',',':'), ensure_ascii=False).encode(); print(hashlib.sha256(b).hexdigest())"
# expect: dcff8509f422d2ee7b4e418be0e259525424d025e3e951b4a06dce69069173c3

Canonical record JSON

{
  "metadata": {
    "abstract_canon_sha256": "e88885bfcc895cb9dcc96a4fb8c5b4b279d7d84cfeccd3b0648ef3e35c2346a1",
    "cross_cats_sorted": [
      "astro-ph.SR"
    ],
    "license": "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
    "primary_cat": "astro-ph.HE",
    "submitted_at": "2026-02-09T02:54:19Z",
    "title_canon_sha256": "a9d0d89cbaa0184c64d6fd6ebd266062b3ba67023b3325cdedfab8db428e63f0"
  },
  "schema_version": "1.0",
  "source": {
    "id": "2602.08223",
    "kind": "arxiv",
    "version": 3
  }
}