Can We Use Metastable Helium to Trace the Cosmicray我们可以用亚稳态氦来跟踪宇宙射线.ppt

Can We Use Metastable Helium to Trace the Cosmic-Ray Ionization Rate? Nick Indriolo1, L. M. Hobbs2, K. H. Hinkle3, B. J. McCall1 Motivations Molecules are predominantly ionized by cosmic rays The flux of ionizing cosmic rays is unobservable at the Earth Current estimates using other tracers range from 10-18-10-15 s-1 Physical processes associated with He* are thought to be very simple Why Use Metastable Helium? Helium is abundant and ubiquitous in the ISM Relatively simple atomic structure The proposed path to populate the 3S1 state is extremely simple Steady State Analysis Is it Observable? Using reported values for diffuse molecular cloud sight lines, we compute the expected He* column density and equivalent width of the 10830 ? line Observations Selected a favorable diffuse molecular sight line (high ionization rate, bright J magnitude, large NH, “well behaved” stellar He lines) HD 183143 63 minutes on target with Phoenix on Gemini South Data Processing Spectrum More Ways to Remove He+ He+ + H → He + H+ 13.6 eV He+ + H2 → He + H2+ 15.4 eV He+ + H2 → He + H + H+ 18.1 eV He+ + CO → He + O + C+ 22.5 eV He+ + e- → (3S1)He 4.8 eV He+ + e- → (1S0)He 24.6 eV Branching Fraction Redux Direct Excitation to Triplet Manifold A More Complete Analysis Ask Again: Is it Observable? The predicted S/N necessary for a 3σ detection is not much worse than our original prediction With b=0.08 and δ=ζ/3, excitation by secondary electrons is the dominant path to producing metastable helium in diffuse molecular clouds Conclusions Obtaining the S/N necessary to detect interstellar metastable He will be a challenge for current instrument/telescope combinations The pathway to the metastable state is much more complicated than previously thought Excitation to the triplet manifold by secondary electrons greatly complicates the computation of ζHe Acknowledgments More Ways to Remove He+ He+ + H → He + H+ H → H+ uses 13.6 eV He+ + H2 → He + H2+ H2 →