<p>Recent accurate measurements of cosmic-ray (CR) species by ATIC-2, CREAM, and PAMELA reveal an unexpected hardening in the proton and He spectra above a few hundred GeV, a gradual softening of the spectra just below a few hundred GeV, and a harder spectrum of He compared to that of protons. These newly discovered features may offer a clue to the origin of high-energy CRs. We use the Fermi Large Area Telescope observations of the <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mrow><mml:mi>γ</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:math></inline-formula>-ray emission from Earth’s limb for an indirect measurement of the local spectrum of CR protons in the energy range <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mo>∼</mml:mo><mml:mn>90</mml:mn><mml:mtext> </mml:mtext><mml:mtext> </mml:mtext><mml:mi>GeV</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mi>–</mml:mi><mml:mn>6</mml:mn><mml:mtext> </mml:mtext><mml:mtext> </mml:mtext><mml:mi>TeV</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:math></inline-formula> (derived from a photon energy range 15 GeV–1 TeV). Our analysis shows that single power law and broken power law spectra fit the data equally well and yield a proton spectrum with index <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mrow><mml:mn>2.68</mml:mn><mml:mo>±</mml:mo><mml:mn>0.04</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:math></inline-formula> and <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mrow><mml:mn>2.61</mml:mn><mml:mo>±</mml:mo><mml:mn>0.08</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:math></inline-formula> above <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mrow><mml:mo>∼</mml:mo><mml:mn>200</mml:mn><mml:mtext> </mml:mtext><mml:mtext> </mml:mtext><mml:mi>GeV</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:math></inline-formula>, respectively.</p>Read less <