On the interpretation of the cosmic-ray anisotropy at ultra-high energies
arXiv:0804.1088
Abstract
A natural interpretation of the correlation between nearby Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) and the highest-energy cosmic rays observed recently by the Pierre Auger Collaboration is that the sources of the cosmic rays are either AGN or other objects with a similar spatial distribution (the ``AGN hypothesis''). We question this interpretation. We calculate the expected distribution of the arrival directions of cosmic rays under the AGN hypothesis and argue that it is not supported by the data, one of manifestations of the discrepancy being the deficit of events from the direction of the Virgo supercluster. We briefly discuss possible alternative explanations including the origin of a significant part of the observed events from Cen A.
12 pages, 3 figures
References in corpus (5)
- Search for Correlations between HiRes Stereo Events and Active Galactic Nuclei
- The optical depth of the Universe to ultrahigh energy cosmic ray scattering in the magnetized large scale structure
- Comment on "Correlation of the Highest-Energy Cosmic Rays with Nearby Extragalactic Objects"
- Light Nuclei solving Auger puzzles. The Cen-A imprint
- The soft X-ray Cluster-AGN spatial cross-correlation function in the ROSAT-NEP survey
Cited by in corpus (10)
- High-energy Particle Acceleration and Production of Ultra-high-energy Cosmic Rays in the Giant Lobes of Centaurus A
- Astrophysical implications of hypothetical stable TeV-scale black holes
- High energy radiation from Centaurus A
- Magnetic Deflections of Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays from Centaurus A
- Cross-Correlation between UHECR Arrival Distribution and Large-Scale Structure
- The GZK horizon and constraints on the cosmic ray source spectrum from observations in the GZK regime
- Origin of ultra-high energy cosmic rays in the era of Auger and Telescope Array
- Lorentz symmetry violation and the results of the AUGER experiment
- Problems in High Energy Astrophysics
- Search for Nuclei Sources in the Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Ray Data