The secondary-to-primary B/C ratio is widely used to study the cosmic ray
(CR) propagation processes in the Galaxy. It is usually assumed that secondary
nuclei such as Li-Be-B are entirely generated by collisions of heavier CR
nuclei with the interstellar medium (ISM). We study the CR propagation under a
scenario where secondary nuclei can also be produced or accelerated from
galactic sources. We consider the processes of hadronic interactions inside
supernova remnants (SNRs) and re-acceleration of background CRs in strong
shocks. Thus, we investigate their impact in the propagation parameter
determination within present and future data. The spectra of Li-Be-B nuclei
emitted from SNRs are harder than those due to CR collisions with the ISM. The
secondary-to-primary ratios flatten significantly at ~TeV/n energies, both from
spallation and re-acceleration in the sources. The two mechanisms are
complementary to each other and depend on the properties of the local ISM
around the expanding remnants. The secondary production in SNRs is significant
for dense background media, n ~1 cm^-3, while the amount of re-accelerated CRs
is relevant for SNRs expanding into rarefied media, n ~0.1 cm-3. Due to these
effects, the the diffusion parameter 'delta' may be misunderstood by a factor
of ~5-15%. Our estimations indicate that an experiment of the AMS-02 caliber
can constrain the key propagation parameters while breaking the
source-transport degeneracy, for a wide class of B/C-consistent models. Given
the precision of the data expected from on-going experiments, the SNR
production/acceleration of secondary nuclei should be considered, if any, to
prevent a possible mis-determination of the CR transport parameters.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures; matches the published versio
