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Register a new userOn a possible photon origin of the most-energetic AGASA events
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P. Homola
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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.
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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.
ASASSN-14ms may represent the most luminous Type Ibn supernova (SN~Ibn) ever detected, with an absolute U-band magnitude brighter than -22.0 mag and a total bolometric luminosity >1.0x10^{44} erg/s near maximum light. The early-time spectra of this SN are characterized by a blue continuum on which are superimposed narrow P~Cygni profile lines of He I, suggesting the presence of slowly moving (~1000 km/s), He-rich circumstellar material (CSM). At 1--2 months after maximum brightness, the He I line profiles become only slightly broader, with blueshifted velocities of 2000--3000 km/s, consistent with the CSM shell being continuously accelerated by the SN light and ejecta. Like most SNe~Ibn, the light curves of ASASSN-14ms show rapid post-peak evolution, dropping by ~7 mag in the V band over three months. Such a rapid post-peak decline and high luminosity can be explained with interaction between SN ejecta and helium-rich CSM of 0.9~M_{odot} at a distance of~10^{15} cm. The CSM around ASASSN-14ms is estimated to originate from a pre-explosion event with a mass-loss rate of 6.7~M_odot /yr (assuming a velocity of ~1000 km/s), which is consistent with abundant He-rich material violently ejected during the late Wolf-Rayet (WN9-11 or Opfe) stage. After examining the light curves for a sample of SNe~Ibn, we find that the more luminous ones tend to have slower post-peak decline rates, reflecting that the observed differences may arise primarily from discrepancies in the CSM distribution around the massive progenitors.
We present deep ($>$2.4 Ms) observations of the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant with {it NuSTAR}, which operates in the 3--79 keV bandpass and is the first instrument capable of spatially resolving the remnant above 15 keV. We find that the emission is not entirely dominated by the forward shock nor by a smooth bright ring at the reverse shock. Instead we find that the $>$15 keV emission is dominated by knots near the center of the remnant and dimmer filaments near the remnants outer rim. These regions are fit with unbroken power-laws in the 15--50 keV bandpass, though the central knots have a steeper ($Gamma sim -3.35$) spectrum than the outer filaments ($Gamma sim -3.06$). We argue this difference implies that the central knots are located in the 3-D interior of the remnant rather than at the outer rim of the remnant and seen in the center due to projection effects. The morphology of $>$15 keV emission does not follow that of the radio emission nor that of the low energy ($<$12 keV) X-rays, leaving the origin of the $>$15 keV emission as an open mystery. Even at the forward shock front we find less steepening of the spectrum than expected from an exponentially cut off electron distribution with a single cutoff energy. Finally, we find that the GeV emission is not associated with the bright features in the {it NuSTAR} band while the TeV emission may be, suggesting that both hadronic and leptonic emission mechanisms may be at work.
A Lorentz-noninvariant modification of the kinematic dispersion law was proposed in [hep-th/0211237], claimed to be derivable from from q-deformed noncommutative theory, and argued to evade ultrahigh energy threshold anomalies (trans-GKZ-cutoff cosmic rays and TeV-photons) by raising the respective thresholds. It is pointed out that such dispersion laws do not follow from deformed oscillator systems, and the proposed dispersion law is invalidated by tachyonic propagation, as well as photon instability, in addition to the process considered.
We present the interpretation of the muon and scintillation signals of ultra-high-energy air showers observed by AGASA and Yakutsk extensive air shower array experiments. We consider case-by-case ten highest energy events with known muon content and conclude that at the 95% confidence level (C.L.) none of them was induced by a primary photon. Taking into account statistical fluctuations and differences in the energy estimation of proton and photon primaries, we derive an upper limit of 36% at 95% C.L. on the fraction of primary photons in the cosmic-ray flux above 10^20 eV. This result disfavors the Z-burst and superheavy dark-matter solutions to the GZK-cutoff problem.
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