Correlation between Ultra-high Energy Cosmic Rays and Active Galactic Nuclei from Fermi Large Area Telescope

Abstract

We study the possibility that the $\gamma$-ray loud active galactic nuclei (AGN) are the sources of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECR), through the correlation analysis of their locations and the arrival directions of UHECR. We use the $\gamma$-ray loud AGN with $d\le 100\mathrm{Mpc}$ from the second Fermi Large Area Telescope AGN catalog and the UHECR data with $E\ge 55\mathrm{EeV}$ observed by Pierre Auger Observatory. The distribution of arrival directions expected from the $\gamma$-ray loud AGN is compared with that of the observed UHECR using the correlational angular distance distribution and the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. We conclude that the hypothesis that the $\gamma$-ray loud AGN are the dominant sources of UHECR is disfavored unless there is a large smearing effect due to the intergalactic magnetic fields.

14 pages, 3 figures, 1 table

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