Estimates of the cosmic gamma-ray flux at PeV to EeV energies from the EAS-MSU experiment data

Abstract

Archival EAS-MSU data are searched for anomalous muonless events which may be caused by primary gamma rays with energies between 10^15 eV and 10^18 eV. We consider a refined sample of high-quality data and confirm the previously reported detection of a non-zero gamma-ray flux at ~5x10^16 eV with a similar flux value but at somewhat lower statistical significance, corresponding to the depletion of the sample. We present upper limits on the flux below and above these energies, including the first constraints in the range (10^17-10^18) eV never studied by any other experiment.

arXiv comment4 pages, 3 figures, jetpl.cls style. V.2: a reference corrected

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Cited by in corpus (5)

• Constraining heavy decaying dark matter with the high energy gamma-ray limits
• A Possible Two-component Flux for the High Energy Neutrino Events at IceCube
• KASCADE-Grande Limits on the Isotropic Diffuse Gamma-Ray Flux between 100 TeV and 1 EeV
• Constraints on the flux of $\sim (10^{16}-10^{17.5})$ eV cosmic photons from the EAS-MSU muon data
• Full Monte-Carlo description of the Moscow State University Extensive Air Shower experiment