Hadronic cosmic-ray interactions in molecular clouds: Gamma-ray, neutrino, and secondary particle fluxes from a full six-species nuclear composition
Phys. Rev. D 114, 043074 – Published 31 August, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/2crw-p17x
Abstract
We present a geant4 Monte Carlo simulation of cosmic-ray (CR) hadronic interactions in a spherical molecular cloud (, 13 concentric shells, density profile) using six primary CR species, protons, alpha particles, carbon, oxygen, silicon, and iron, drawn from galprop-helmod local interstellar spectra over to , the hadronic interaction regime in which pion production and nuclear spallation dominate the secondary particle output. We compute, for the first time within this framework, radial energy deposition profiles, per-layer secondary production rates, and the differential physical flux of all emerging stable secondaries for the full nuclear CR composition. Energy deposition scales as , with the secondary cascade dominating of the deposited energy in the dense core for all species. Alpha particles produce the highest integrated gamma-ray flux ( above 100 MeV), followed by protons (); together, they account for of the total emerging gamma-ray and neutrino fluxes. A robust composition-diagnostic signature emerges in the neutrino sector: the ratio above 100 MeV decreases from for protons, driven by the charge asymmetry, to for nuclei (C, O, Si), directly encoding the isospin content of the primary CR beam in an observable flux ratio. Secondary nuclear clusters (, , , , and heavier ions up to ) emerge exclusively for nuclei heavier than protons, contributing at the level of the secondary proton flux for light clusters, while heavy-ion fragments remain 1 to 2 orders of magnitude below the secondary proton channel.