Searching for a Correlation Between Cosmic-Ray Sources Above 10^{19} eV and Large-Scale Structure

dc.creatorKashti, Tamar
dc.creatorWaxman, Eli
dc.date2008-01-29
dc.date2008-05-12
dc.date.accessioned2026-07-07T12:38:02Z
dc.date.available2026-07-07T12:38:02Z
dc.descriptionWe study the anisotropy signature which is expected if the sources of ultra high energy, >10^{19} eV, cosmic-rays (UHECRs) are extragalactic and trace the large scale distribution of luminous matter. Using the PSCz galaxy catalog as a tracer of the large scale structure (LSS), we derive the expected all sky angular distribution of the UHECR intensity. We define a statistic, that measures the correlation between the predicted and observed UHECR arrival direction distributions, and show that it is more sensitive to the expected anisotropy signature than the power spectrum and the two point correlation function. The distribution of the correlation statistic is not sensitive to the unknown redshift evolution of UHECR source density and to the unknown strength and structure of inter-galactic magnetic fields. We show, using this statistic, that recently published >5.7x10^{19} eV Auger data are inconsistent with isotropy at ~98% CL, and consistent with a source distribution that traces LSS, with some preference to a source distribution that is biased with respect to the galaxy distribution. The anisotropy signature should be detectable also at lower energy, >4x10^{19} eV. A few fold increase of the Auger exposure is likely to increase the significance to >99% CL, but not to >99.9% CL (unless the UHECR source density is comparable or larger than that of galaxies). In order to distinguish between different bias models, the systematic uncertainty in the absolute energy calibration of the experiments should be reduced to well below the current ~25%.
dc.description17 pages, 8 figures. v2: reference added, typos corrected, accepted to JCAP
dc.identifierhttps://arxiv.org/abs/0801.4516
dc.identifierhttp://arxiv.org/abs/0801.4516
dc.identifierJCAP 0805:006,2008
dc.identifierdoi:10.1088/1475-7516/2008/05/006
dc.identifier.urihttp://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/218617
dc.subjectAstrophysics
dc.subjectHigh Energy Physics - Phenomenology
dc.titleSearching for a Correlation Between Cosmic-Ray Sources Above 10^{19} eV and Large-Scale Structure
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