Shedding New Light on the Milky Way with TeV Electrons

Cosmic rays and gamma rays are outstanding probes of the extreme universe because their energy scale isolates and illuminates the most powerful astrophysical objects.

Over the last few years, observations have detected a new gamma-ray source class, the TeV halo, which is powered by the inverse-Compton scattering of TeV electrons that are accelerated by young pulsars.

Approximately a dozen TeV halos have now been detected, providing insight into their intensity, spectrum, and morphology.

Most importantly for this proposal, data indicate that cosmic-ray diffusion in TeV halos is significantly inhibited compared to the standard interstellar medium, implying that TeV halos act as a bridge between the physics of compact sources and the bulk of the Milky Way.

Building on these observational successes, we propose a detailed modeling program aimed at utilizing TeV halos as a tool to understand cosmic-ray propagation.

Our program proceeds in three stages, (1) modeling cosmic-ray propagation within TeV halos, (2) modeling interactions between TeV halos and the interstellar medium in the solar neighborhood, (3) modeling the effect of TeV halos on galactic cosmic-ray propagation.

Our program takes advantage of recent developments in TeV halo observations and galactic diffuse modeling in order to enable us to produce TeV diffuse emission models with unprecedented accuracy. Finally, we will use these models to constrain potential new physics signal, such as from dark matter annihilation.