No Arabic abstract
The variation in the intensity of cosmic rays at small angular scales is attributed to the interstellar turbulence in the vicinity of the Solar system. We show that {a turbulent origin of the small-scale structures implies that} the morphology of the observed cosmic-ray intensity skymap varies with our location in the interstellar turbulence. The gyroradius of cosmic rays is shown to be the length scale associated with an observable change in the skymap over a radian angular scale. The extent to which the intensity mpo{at a certain} angular scale varies is proportional to the change in our location with a maximum change of about the amplitude of intensity variation at that scale in the existing skymap.} We suggest that for TeV cosmic rays a measurable variation could occur over a time scale of a decade due to the Earths motion through the interstellar medium, if interstellar turbulence persists down to the gyroradius, mpo{about $00 mumathrm{pc}$ for TeV-ish cosmic rays}. Observational evidence of the variability, or an absence of it, could provide a useful insight into the physical origin of the small-scale anisotropy.
The distribution of cosmic rays in the Galaxy at energies above few TeVs is still uncertain and this affects the expectations for the diffuse gamma flux produced by hadronic interactions of cosmic rays with the interstellar gas. We show that the TeV gamma-ray sky can provide interesting constraints. Namely, we compare the flux from the galactic plane measured by Argo-YBJ, HESS, HAWC and Milagro with the expected flux due to diffuse emission and point-like and extended sources observed by HESS showing that experimental data can already discriminate among different hyphoteses for cosmic ray distribution. The constraints can be strengthened if the contribution of sources not resolved by HESS is taken into account.
We present the results of photometric observations of three TeV blazars, 3C 66A, S5 0954+658 and BL Lacertae, during the period 2013--2017. Our extensive observations were performed in a total of 360 nights which produced $sim$6820 image frames in BVRI bands. We study flux and spectral variability of these blazars on these lengthy timescales. We also examine the optical Spectral Energy Distributions of these blazars, which are crucial in understanding the emission mechanism of long-term variability in blazars. All three TeV blazars exhibited strong flux variability during our observations. The colour variations are mildly chromatic on long timescales for two of them. The nature of the long-term variability of 3C 66A and S5 0954+658 is consistent with a model of a non-thermal variable component that has a continuous injection of relativistic electrons with power law distributions around 4.3 and 4.6, respectively. However, the long-term flux and colour variability of BL Lac suggests that these can arise from modest changes in velocities or viewing angle toward the emission region, leading to variations in the Doppler boosting of the radiation by a factor ~1.2 over the period of these observations.
We report the analysis of the $10-1000$ TeV large-scale sidereal anisotropy of Galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) with the data collected by the Tibet Air Shower Array from October, 1995 to February, 2010. In this analysis, we improve the energy estimate and extend the declination range down to $-30^{circ}$. We find that the anisotropy maps above 100 TeV are distinct from that at multi-TeV band. The so-called tail-in and loss-cone features identified at low energies get less significant and a new component appears at $sim100$ TeV. The spatial distribution of the GCR intensity with an excess (7.2$sigma$ pre-trial, 5.2$sigma$ post-trial) and a deficit ($-5.8sigma$ pre-trial) are observed in the 300 TeV anisotropy map, in a good agreement with IceCubes results at 400 TeV. Combining the Tibet results in the northern sky with IceCubes results in the southern sky, we establish a full-sky picture of the anisotropy in hundreds of TeV band. We further find that the amplitude of the first order anisotropy increases sharply above $sim100$ TeV, indicating a new component of the anisotropy. All these results may shed new light on understanding the origin and propagation of GCRs.
We have examined 40 NuSTAR light curves (LCs) of five TeV emitting high synchrotron peaked blazars: 1ES 0229+200, Mrk 421, Mrk 501, 1ES 1959+650 and PKS 2155-304. Four of the blazars showed intraday variability in the NuSTAR energy range of 3-79 keV. Using an auto correlation function analysis we searched for intraday variability timescales in these LCs and found indications of several between 2.5 and 32.8 ks in eight LCs of Mrk 421, a timescale around 8.0 ks for one LC of Mrk 501, and timescales of 29.6 ks and 57.4 ks in two LCs of PKS 2155-304. The other two blazars LCs do not show any evidence for intraday variability timescales shorter than the lengths of those observations, however, the data was both sparser and noisier, for them. We found positive correlations with zero lag between soft (3-10 keV) and hard (10-79 keV) bands for most of the LCs, indicating that their emissions originate from the same electron population. We examined spectral variability using a hardness ratio analysis and noticed a general harder-when-brighter behavior. The 22 LCs of Mrk 421 observed between July 2012 and April 2013 show that this source was in a quiescent state for an extended period of time and then underwent an unprecedented double peaked outburst while monitored on a daily basis during 10 - 16 April 2013. We briefly discuss models capable of explaining these blazar emissions.
Cosmic-ray electrons and positrons (CREs) at GeV-TeV energies are a unique probe of our local Galactic neighborhood. CREs lose energy rapidly via synchrotron radiation and inverse-Compton scattering processes while propagating within the Galaxy and these losses limit their propagation distance. For electrons with TeV energies, the limit is on the order of a kiloparsec. Within that distance there are only a few known astrophysical objects capable of accelerating electrons to such high energies. It is also possible that the CREs are the products of the annihilation or decay of heavy dark matter (DM) particles. VERITAS, an array of imaging air Cherenkov telescopes in southern Arizona, USA, is primarily utilized for gamma-ray astronomy, but also simultaneously collects CREs during all observations. We describe our methods of identifying CREs in VERITAS data and present an energy spectrum, extending from 300 GeV to 5 TeV, obtained from approximately 300 hours of observations. A single power-law fit is ruled out in VERITAS data. We find that the spectrum of CREs is consistent with a broken power law, with a break energy at 710 $pm$ 40$_{stat}$ $pm$ 140$_{syst}$ GeV.