Prospects of detecting a large-scale anisotropy of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays from a nearby source with the K-EUSO orbital telescope

Abstract

KLYPVE-EUSO (K-EUSO) is a planned orbital detector of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs), which is to be deployed on board the International Space Station. K-EUSO is expected to have a uniform exposure over the celestial sphere and register from 120 to 500 UHECRs at energies above 57 EeV in a 2-year mission. We employed the TransportCR and CRPropa 3 packages to estimate prospects of detecting a large-scale anisotropy of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays from a nearby source with K-EUSO. Nearby active galactic nuclei Centaurus A, M82, NGC 253, M87 and Fornax A were considered as possible sources of UHECRs. A minimal model for extragalactic cosmic rays and neutrinos by Kachelriess, Kalashev, Ostapchenko and Semikoz (2017) was chosen for definiteness. We demonstrate that an observation of $\gtrsim 300$ events will allow detecting a large-scale anisotropy with a high confidence level providing the fraction of from-source events is $\simeq$10-15%, depending on a particular source. The threshold fraction decreases with an increasing sample size. We also discuss if an overdensity originating from a nearby source can be observed at around the ankle in case a similar anisotropy is found beyond 57 EeV. The results are generic and hold for other future experiments with a uniform exposure of the celestial sphere.

18 pages; version 2: discussion extended, references added, results unchanged; version 3: numerous changes to address comments of the referee; accepted by JCAP

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Cited by in corpus (2)

• Identification of Patterns in Cosmic-Ray Arrival Directions using Dynamic Graph Convolutional Neural Networks
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