Cosmic Ray Astronomy

Abstract

Cosmic ray astronomy attempts to identify and study the sources of ultrahigh energy cosmic rays. It is unique in its reliance on charged particles as the information carriers. While no discrete source of ultrahigh energy cosmic rays has been identified so far, a new generation of detectors is acquiring the huge exposure that is needed at the highest energies, where deflection by magnetic fields is minimized and the background from distant sources is eliminated by pion photoproduction. In this paper, we summarize the status of cosmic ray astronomy, describing the detectors and the analysis techniques.

27 pages, 3 figures, review to appear in New Journal of Physics [Focus Issue]

References in corpus (15)

• Correlation of the highest energy cosmic rays with nearby extragalactic objects
• First Observation of the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin Suppression
• Correlation of the highest-energy cosmic rays with the positions of nearby active galactic nuclei
• Upper limit on the cosmic-ray photon flux above 10^19 eV using the surface detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory
• Upper limit on the diffuse flux of UHE tau neutrinos from the Pierre Auger Observatory
• Observations of the Askaryan Effect in Ice
• ARIANNA: A New Concept for UHE Neutrino Detection
• Upper limit on the ultra-high-energy photon flux from AGASA and Yakutsk data
• Upper limit on the photon fraction in highest-energy cosmic rays from AGASA data
• The UHECR spectrum measured at the Pierre Auger Observatory and its astrophysical implications
• Constraining the fraction of primary gamma rays at ultra-high energies from the muon data of the Yakutsk extensive-air-shower array
• Studies of clustering in the arrival directions of cosmic rays detected at the Pierre Auger Observatory above 10 EeV
• Search for correlation of UHECRs and BL Lacs in Pierre Auger Observatory data
• Alternative Methods to Finding Patterns in HiRes Stereo Data
• Prospects for Charged Particle Astronomy

Cited by in corpus (16)

• Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays: The Intersection of the Cosmic and Energy Frontiers
• High-pressure flux growth, structural, and superconducting properties of LnFeAsO (Ln = Pr, Nd, Sm) single crystals
• Search for Anisotropy of Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays with the Telescope Array Experiment
• Angular correlation of cosmic neutrinos with ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays and implications for their sources
• Probing the central black hole in M87 with gamma-rays
• The highest energy neutrinos: first evidence for cosmic origin
• Measurements and implications of cosmic ray anisotropies from TeV to trans-EeV energies
• Anisotropies of Ultra-high Energy Cosmic Rays Dominated by a Single Source in the Presence of Deflections
• Leading-order deflection of particles by a moving Schwarzschild lens with a two-dimensional velocity
• How to search for multiple messengers -- a general framework beyond two messengers
• A minimal width of the arrival direction distribution of ultra-high energy cosmic rays detected with the Yakutsk array
• Large-scale distribution of cosmic rays in right ascension as observed by the Yakutsk array at energies above $10^{18}$ eV
• The Search for the Sources of the Cosmic Rays One Century after their Discovery
• A method to search for correlations of ultra-high energy cosmic ray masses with the large scale structures in the local galaxy density field
• IceCube: Neutrino Physics from GeV - PeV
• Closing in on the sources of Galactic and extragalactic cosmic rays