We discuss the main results that were recently published by the Auger Collaboration and their impact on our knowledge of the ultra high energy cosmic rays and neutrinos.
Radio waves, perhaps because they are uniquely transparent in our terrestrial atmosphere, as well as the cosmos beyond, or perhaps because they are macroscopic, so the basic instruments of detection (antennas) are easily constructable, arguably occup
y a privileged position within the electromagnetic spectrum, and, correspondingly, receive disproportionate attention experimentally. Detection of radio-frequency radiation, at macroscopic wavelengths, has blossomed within the last decade as a competitive method for measurement of cosmic particles, particularly charged cosmic rays and neutrinos. Cosmic-ray detection via radio emission from extensive air showers has been demonstrated to be a reliable technique that has reached a reconstruction quality of the cosmic-ray parameters competitive with more traditional approaches. Radio detection of neutrinos in dense media seems to be the most promising technique to achieve the gigantic detection volumes required to measure neutrinos at energies beyond the PeV-scale flux established by IceCube. In this article, we review radio detection both of cosmic rays in the atmosphere, as well as neutrinos in dense media.
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory has recently found compelling evidence for a particular blazar producing high-energy neutrinos and $mathrm{PeV}$ cosmic rays, however the sources of cosmic rays above several $mathrm{EeV}$ remain unidentified. It is b
elieved that the same environments that accelerate ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) also produce high-energy neutrinos via hadronic interactions of lower-energy cosmic rays. Two out of three joint analyses of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, the Pierre Auger Observatory and the Telescope Array yielded hints for a possible directional correlation of high-energy neutrinos and UHECRs. These hints however became less significant with more data. Recently, an improved analysis with an approach complementary to the other analyses has been developed. This analysis searches for neutrino point sources in the vicinity of UHECRs with search windows estimated from deflections by galactic magnetic fields. We present this new analysis method for searching common hadronic sources, additionally including neutrino data measured by ANTARES in order to increase the sensitivity to possible correlations in the Southern Hemisphere.
The sources of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) are still one of the main open questions in high-energy astrophysics. If UHECRs are accelerated in astrophysical sources, they are expected to produce high-energy photons and neutrinos due to the
interaction with the surrounding astrophysical medium or ambient radiation. In particular, neutrinos are powerful probes for the investigation of the region of production and acceleration of UHECRs since they are not sensitive to magnetic deflections nor to interactions with the interstellar medium. The results of three different analyses that correlate the very high-energy neutrino candidates detected by IceCube and ANTARES and the highest-energy cosmic rays measured by the Pierre Auger Observatory and the Telescope Array will be discussed. The first two analyses use a sample of high-energy neutrinos from IceCube and ANTARES selected to have a significant probability to be of astrophysical origin. The first analysis cross-correlates the arrival directions of these selected neutrino events and UHECRs. The second one is a stacked likelihood analysis assuming as stacked sources the high-energy neutrino directions and looking for excesses in the UHECR data set around the directions of the neutrino candidates. The third analysis instead uses a larger sample of neutrinos selected to look for neutrino point-like sources. It consists of a likelihood method that looks for excesses in the neutrino point-source data set around the directions of the highest-energy UHECRs.
This is a summary of a series of lectures on the current experimental and theoretical status of our understanding of origin and nature of cosmic radiation. Specific focus is put on ultra-high energy cosmic radiation above ~10^17 eV, including seconda
ry neutral particles and in particular neutrinos. The most important open questions are related to the mass composition and sky distributions of these particles as well as on the location and nature of their sources. High energy neutrinos at GeV energies and above from extra-terrestrial sources have not yet been detected and experimental upper limits start to put strong contraints on the sources and the acceleration mechanism of very high energy cosmic rays.
We present a strong hint of a connection between high energy $gamma$-ray emitting blazars, very high energy neutrinos, and ultra high energy cosmic rays. We first identify potential hadronic sources by filtering $gamma$-ray emitters %from existing ca
talogs that are in spatial coincidence with the high energy neutrinos detected by IceCube. The neutrino filtered $gamma$-ray emitters are then correlated with the ultra high energy cosmic rays from the Pierre Auger Observatory and the Telescope Array by scanning in $gamma$-ray flux ($F_{gamma}$) and angular separation ($theta$) between sources and cosmic rays. A maximal excess of 80 cosmic rays (42.5 expected) is found at $thetaleq10^{circ}$ from the neutrino filtered $gamma$-ray emitters selected from the second hard {it Fermi}-LAT catalogue (2FHL) and for $F_gammaleft(>50:mathrm{GeV}right)geq1.8times10^{-11}:mathrm{ph},mathrm{cm}^{-2},mathrm{s}^{-1}$. The probability for this to happen is $2.4 times 10^{-5}$, which translates to $sim 2.4 times 10^{-3}$ after compensation for all the considered trials. No excess of cosmic rays is instead observed for the complement sample of $gamma$-ray emitters (i.e. not in spatial connection with IceCube neutrinos). A likelihood ratio test comparing the connection between the neutrino filtered and the complement source samples with the cosmic rays favours a connection between neutrino filtered emitters and cosmic rays with a probability of $sim1.8times10^{-3}$ ($2.9sigma)$ after compensation for all the considered trials. The neutrino filtered $gamma$-ray sources that make up the cosmic rays excess are blazars of the high synchrotron peak type. More statistics is needed to further investigate these sources as candidate cosmic ray and neutrino emitters.