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Register a new userOn the interpretation of the cosmic-ray anisotropy at ultra-high energies
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A natural interpretation of the correlation between nearby Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) and the highest-energy cosmic rays observed recently by the Pierre Auger Collaboration is that the sources of the cosmic rays are either AGN or other objects with a similar spatial distribution (the ``AGN hypothesis). We question this interpretation. We calculate the expected distribution of the arrival directions of cosmic rays under the AGN hypothesis and argue that it is not supported by the data, one of manifestations of the discrepancy being the deficit of events from the direction of the Virgo supercluster. We briefly discuss possible alternative explanations including the origin of a significant part of the observed events from Cen A.
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We argue that the increase of the ratio baryon/meson due to the presence of strong colour fields and percolation in ultra-high energy hadronic collisions, helps to explain some of the global features of ultra-high energy cosmic ray cascades at E>10^18 eV and, in particular the observed excess in the number of muons with respect to current models of hadronic interactions. A reasonable agreement with the small value and slope of the average depth of shower maximum Xmax vs shower energy -- as seen in data collected at the Pierre Auger Observatory -- can be obtained with a fast increase of the p-Air production cross-section compatible with the Froissart bound.
The fluxes of electrons, positrons, gammas, Cherenkov photons and muons in individual extensive air showers induced by the primary protons and helium, oxygen and iron nuclei at the level of observation have been estimated with help of the code CORSICA 6.616. The comparison show that the values of the function Xi**2 per one degree of freedom changes from 1.1 for iron nuclei to 0.9 for primary protons. As this difference is small all readings of detectors of the Vavilov-Cherenkov radiation have been used. At last, readings of underground detectors of muons with energies above 1 GeV have been exploited to make definite conclusion about chemical composition.
We present new measurements of the energy spectra of cosmic-ray (CR) nuclei from the second flight of the balloon-borne experiment Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass (CREAM). The instrument included different particle detectors to provide redundant charge identification and measure the energy of CRs up to several hundred TeV. The measured individual energy spectra of C, O, Ne, Mg, Si, and Fe are presented up to $sim 10^{14}$ eV. The spectral shape looks nearly the same for these primary elements and it can be fitted to an $E^{-2.66 pm 0.04}$ power law in energy. Moreover, a new measurement of the absolute intensity of nitrogen in the 100-800 GeV/$n$ energy range with smaller errors than previous observations, clearly indicates a hardening of the spectrum at high energy. The relative abundance of N/O at the top of the atmosphere is measured to be $0.080 pm 0.025 $(stat.)$ pm 0.025 $(sys.) at $sim $800 GeV/$n$, in good agreement with a recent result from the first CREAM flight.
The TRACER instrument (``Transition Radiation Array for Cosmic Energetic Radiation) has been developed for direct measurements of the heavier primary cosmic-ray nuclei at high energies. The instrument had a successful long-duration balloon flight in Antarctica in 2003. The detector system and measurement process are described, details of the data analysis are discussed, and the individual energy spectra of the elements O, Ne, Mg, Si, S, Ar, Ca, and Fe (nuclear charge Z=8 to 26) are presented. The large geometric factor of TRACER and the use of a transition radiation detector make it possible to determine the spectra up to energies in excess of 10$^{14}$ eV per particle. A power-law fit to the individual energy spectra above 20 GeV per amu exhibits nearly the same spectral index ($sim$ 2.65 $pm$ 0.05) for all elements, without noticeable dependence on the elemental charge Z.
If ultra-high-energy cosmic rays originate from extragalactic sources, the offsets of their arrival directions from these sources imply an upper limit on the strength of the extragalactic magnetic field. The Pierre Auger Collaboration has recently reported that anisotropy in the arrival directions of cosmic rays is correlated with several types of extragalactic objects. If these cosmic rays originate from these objects, they imply a limit on the extragalactic magnetic field strength of B < 0.7-2.2 x 10^-9 (lambda_B / 1 Mpc)^-1/2 G for coherence lengths lambda_B < 100 Mpc and B < 0.7-2.2 x 10^-10 G at larger scales. This is comparable to existing upper limits at lambda_B = 1 Mpc, and improves on them by a factor 4-12 at larger scales. The principal source of uncertainty in our results is the unknown cosmic-ray composition.
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