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Register a new userThe most energetic cosmic rays and their possible sources
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The primary cosmic rays particles with energies above 10**20 eV have been observed at many extensive air shower arrays since the beginning of observations over 40 years ago. The validity of measurements of signal s(600) used as energy estimation parameter at the Yakutsk array has been confirmed. Our calculations show that the width of the time pulses increases from nearly 100 ns at a distance of 100 m from the shower axis up to 4 - 5 $mu$s at 1500 m. The calculated estimate of energy of extensive air shower is ~ 1.7 times smaller than the experimental estimate for the same value s(600). The pointing directions of extensive air showers observed at the Pierre Auger Observatory were fitted within +-3.1**o with positions of the nearby active galactic nuclei from the Veron-Cetty and P. Veron catalog. The cosmic ray luminosity of the active galactic nuclei which happened to be a source of the particular cosmic ray event constitutes a fraction ~10**-4 of the optical one if only cosmic ray particles with energies above 6*10**19 eV are produced. If produced cosmic ray particles have a spectrum up to ~ 100 GeV then the cosmic ray luminosity of the active galactic nuclei should be much higher than the optical one.
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The signatures of UHE proton propagation through CMB are pair-production dip and GZK cutoff. The visible manifestations of these spectral features are ankle, beginning of GZK cutoff in the differential spectrum and E_{1/2} in integral spectrum. Observed in all experiments, the ankle is usually interpreted as transition from galactic to extragalactic cosmic rays. Using the mass composition measured by HiRes, Telescope Array (TA) and Auger detectors at energy (1-3) EeV, calculated anisotropy of galactic cosmic rays at these energies, and the elongation curves we strongly argue against the interpretation of the ankle given above. The transition must occur at lower energy, most probably at the second knee as the dip model predicts. The other prediction of this model, the shape of the dip, is well confirmed by HiRes, TA, AGASA and Yakutsk detectors, and, after recalibration of energies, by Auger detector. Predicted beginning of GZK cutoff and E_{1/2} agree well with HiRes and TA data. However, directly measured mass composition remains a puzzle. While HiRes and TA detectors observe the proton-dominated mass composition, as required by the dip model, the data of Auger detector strongly evidence for nuclei mass composition becoming steadily heavier at energy higher than 4 EeV and reaching Iron at energy about 35 EeV. The Auger-based scenario is consistent with another interpretation of the ankle at energy E_a=4 EeV as transition from extragalactic protons to extragalactic nuclei. The heavy- nuclei dominance at higher energies may be provided by low-energy of acceleration for protons E_{max} sim 4 EeV and rigidity-dependent E_{max}^A =Z E_{max}$ for nuclei. The highest energy suppression may be explained as nuclei-destroying cutoff.
In this work the ultra high energy cosmic ray events recorded by the AGASA experiment are analysed. With detailed simulations of the extensive air showers initiated by photons, the probabilities are determined of the photonic origin of the 6 AGASA events for which the muon densities were measured and the reconstructed energies exceeded 10^20 eV. On this basis a new, preliminary upper limit on the photon fraction in cosmic rays above 10^20 eV is derived and compared to the predictions of exemplary top-down cosmic-ray origin models.
Observation of clustering of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECR) suggests that they are emitted by compact sources. Assuming small deflection of UHECR during the propagation, the statistical analysis of clustering allows to estimate the spatial density of the sources, h, including those which have not yet been observed directly. When applied to astrophysical models involving extra-galactic sources, the estimate based on 14 events with energy E>10^{20} eV gives h ~ 6 X 10^{-3} Mps^{-3}. With increasing statistics, this estimate may lead to exclusion of the models which associate the production of UHECR with exceptional galaxies such as AGN, powerful radio-galaxies, dead quasars, and models based on gamma ray bursts.
Various aspects of the connection between cloud cover (CC) and cosmic rays (CR) are analysed. We argue that the anticorrelation between the temporal behaviour of low (LCC) and middle (MCC) clouds evidences against causal connection between them and CR. Nevertheless, if a part of low clouds (LCC) is connected and varies with CR, then its most likely value averaged over the Globe should not exceed 20% at the two standard deviation level.
Energy spectrum of cosmic rays (CR) exhibits power-like behavior with very characteristic knee structure. We consider a generalized statistical model for the production process of cosmic rays which accounts for such behavior in a natural way either by assuming existence of temperature fluctuations in the source of CR, or by assuming specific temperature distribution of CR sources. Both possibilities yield the so called Tsallis statistics and lead to the power-like distribution. We argue that the knee structure arises as result of abrupt change of fluctuations in the source of CR. Its possible origin is briefly discussed.
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