Investigating an angular correlation between nearby starburst galaxies and UHECRs with the Telescope Array experiment

Abstract

The arrival directions of cosmic rays detected by the Pierre Auger Observatory (Auger) with energies above 39~EeV were recently reported to correlate with the positions of 23 nearby starburst galaxies (SBGs): in their best-fit model, 9.7\% of the cosmic-ray flux originates from these objects and undergoes angular diffusion on a $12.9^{\circ }$~scale. On the other hand, some of the SBGs on their list, including the brightest one (M82), are at northern declinations outside the Auger field of view. Data from detectors in the northern hemisphere would be needed to look for cosmic-ray excesses near these objects. In this work, we tested the Auger best-fit model against data collected by the Telescope Array (TA) in a 9-year period, without trying to re-optimize the model parameters for our dataset in order not to introduce statistical penalties. The resulting test statistic (double log-likelihood ratio) was $-1.00$, corresponding to $1.1\sigma$ significance among isotropically generated random datasets, and to $-1.4\sigma$ significance among ones generated assuming the Auger best-fit model. In other words, our data is still insufficient to conclusively rule out either hypothesis. The ongoing fourfold expansion of TA will collect northern hemisphere data with much more statistics, improving our ability to discriminate between different flux models.

arXiv comment3 pages, 4 figures; presented at the UHECR2018 conference, 8-12 October 2018, Paris, France

References in corpus (5)

• GeV Observations of Star-forming Galaxies with \textit{Fermi} LAT
• Indications of Intermediate-Scale Anisotropy of Cosmic Rays with Energy Greater Than 57 EeV in the Northern Sky Measured with the Surface Detector of the Telescope Array Experiment
• Indication of anisotropy in arrival directions of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays through comparison to the flux pattern of extragalactic gamma-ray sources
• Testing a reported correlation between arrival directions of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays and a flux pattern from nearby starburst galaxies using Telescope Array data
• Supernova explosions of massive stars and cosmic rays

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Astrophysical Evidence of Wakefield Acceleration in Galactic and Extragalactic Jets via Gamma Rays and UHECRs