Production of Positrons by Cosmic Rays

Abstract

It is shown that electromagnetic interactions of cosmic ray protons provide a noticeable contribution to positrons production. This is due to a combination of low energy threshold of electron–positron pair creation compared to the thresholds of pion creation in strong interactions and rapid decrease of the cosmic rays energy spectrum. Moreover, the electromagnetically produced positrons are very soft, therefore their annihilation with background electrons directly produces the observed 511 keV gamma-line.