Superbubbles: a laboratory for high energy astrophysics and cosmic‐ray physics

Observations indicate that most massive stars in the Galaxy appear in groups, called OB associations (OBa), where their strong wind activity generates large structures known as superbubbles (SB), inside which the subsequent supernovae (SNe) explode, with a tight space and time correlation. Acknowledging this fact, we investigate through a series of studies, four main questions: 1) Does the clustering of massive stars and SN explosions influence the particle acceleration process in a different way to that in isolated SNe cases? 2) Does it change the phenomenology of galactic cosmic‐rays (GCRs)? 3) Can this help to alleviate some of the problems in the standard GCR source models? 4) Is the link between superbubbles and energetic particles supported by observational data? We argue that the answer is positive to all these questions. This work focuses on question 1) but gives some insights into the other questions.