• Accepted Paper

Microquasars as the major contributors to Galactic cosmic rays around the knee

Samy Kaci, Gwenael Giacinti, Felix Aharonian, and Jie-Shuang Wang

Phys. Rev. Lett. - Accepted 23 October, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/5lvd-k4qb

Abstract

Recently, LHAASO detected a gamma-ray emission extending beyond $100\,\rm{TeV}$ from 4 sources associated to powerful microquasars. We propose that such sources are the main Galactic PeVatrons and investigate their contribution to the proton and gamma-ray fluxes by modeling their entire population. We find that the presence of only ∼10 active powerful microquasars in the Galaxy at any given time is sufficient to account for the proton flux around the knee and to provide a very good explanation of cosmic-ray and gamma-ray data in a self-consistent picture. The $10\,\rm{TeV}$ bump and the $300\,\rm{TeV}$ hardening in the cosmic-ray spectrum naturally appear, and the diffuse background measured by LHAASO above a few tens of TeV is accounted for. This supports the paradigm in which cosmic rays around the knee are predominantly accelerated in a very limited number of powerful microquasars.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation

If the author has provided any supplemental materials with this article they will be available upon publication of the version of record.

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation