Sensitivity of cosmic-ray experiments to ultra-high-energy photons: reconstruction of the spectrum and limits on the superheavy dark matter

Abstract

We estimate the sensitivity of various experiments detecting ultra-high-energy cosmic rays to primary photons with energies above 10^19 eV. We demonstrate that the energy of a primary photon may be significantly (up to a factor of ~ 10) under- or overestimated for particular primary energies and arrival directions. We consider distortion of the reconstructed cosmic-ray spectrum for the photonic component. As an example, we use these results to constrain the parameter space of models of superheavy dark matter by means of both the observed spectra and available limits on the photon content. We find that a significant contribution of ultra-high-energy particles (photons and protons) from decays of superheavy dark matter is allowed by all these constraints.

18 pages, 7 figures

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• Heavy decaying dark matter and IceCube high energy neutrinos
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• Upper limit on the flux of photons with energies above 10^19 eV using the Telescope Array surface detector
• Constraints on the flux of primary cosmic-ray photons at energies E > 10^18 eV from Yakutsk muon data
• Hunting for super-heavy dark matter with the highest-energy cosmic rays
• Constraints on the flux of $\sim (10^{16}-10^{17.5})$ eV cosmic photons from the EAS-MSU muon data
• Hadronically decaying heavy dark matter and high-energy neutrino limits
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• Estimate of the fraction of primary photons in the cosmic-ray flux at energies ~10^17 eV from the EAS-MSU experiment data
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• Review of the Multimessenger Working Group at UHECR-2012
• Full Monte-Carlo description of the Moscow State University Extensive Air Shower experiment
• The local-filament pattern in the anomalous transparency of the Universe for energetic gamma rays
• Bounds from multi-messenger astronomy on the Super Heavy Dark Matter
• Report from the Multi-Messenger Working Group at UHECR-2014 Conference
• Some Observable Effects of Modified Gravity in Cosmology and Astrophysics