On the spectrum of Ultrahigh Energy Cosmic Rays and the Gamma Ray Burst Origin Hypothesis

Abstract

It has been suggested that cosmological gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) can produce the observed flux of cosmic rays at the highest energies. However, recent studies of GRBs indicate that their redshift distribution likely follows that of the average star formation rate and that GRBs were more numerous at high redshifts. As a consequence, we show that photomeson production energy losses suffered by ultrahigh energy cosmic rays coming from GRBs would produce too sharp a spectral high energy cutoff to be consistent with the air shower data. Furthermore, we show that cosmological GRBs fail to supply the energy input required to account for the cosmic ray flux above 10 EeV by a factor of 100-1000.

final version with minor changes, Astroparticle Physics, in press

References in corpus (4)

• BeppoSAX Observations of GRB980425: Detection of the Prompt Event and Monitoring of the Error Box
• Luminosities and Space Densities of Gamma-Ray Bursts
• Statistics of clustering of ultra-high energy cosmic rays and the number of their sources
• Can Gamma Ray Bursts Produce the Observed Cosmic Rays Above $10^{20}$ eV?

Cited by in corpus (24)

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• Gamma-Ray Bursts: Progress, Problems & Prospects
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• High-energy cosmic-ray nuclei from high- and low-luminosity gamma-ray bursts and implications for multi-messenger astronomy
• Astrophysical Origins of Ultrahigh Energy Cosmic Rays
• Ultrahigh Energy Cosmic Rays: The state of the art before the Auger Observatory
• Monocular Measurement of the Spectrum of UHE Cosmic Rays by the FADC Detector of the HiRes Experiment
• High-Energy Cosmic Rays from Gamma-Ray Bursts
• Loop Quantum Gravity and Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays
• Observation of the Ankle and Evidence for a High-Energy Break in the Cosmic Ray Spectrum
• Lorentz Invariance Violation and the Observed Spectrum of Ultrahigh Energy Cosmic Rays
• Enhanced Cosmological GRB Rates and Implications for Cosmogenic Neutrinos
• Probing the tidal disruption flares of massive black holes with high-energy neutrinos
• Lorentz Invariance Violation and the Spectrum and Source Power of Ultrahigh Energy Cosmic Rays
• On the generation of UHECRs in GRBs: a reappraisal
• Testing Lorentz Invariance with Ultra High Energy Cosmic Ray Spectrum
• Cosmic Physics: The High Energy Frontier
• Diffusive Shock Acceleration of High Energy Cosmic Rays
• Long-term Neutrino Afterglows from Gamma-Ray Bursts
• UHECR as Decay Products of Heavy Relics? The Lifetime Problem
• Ultrahigh Energy Cosmic Rays: New Physics or Old Physics?
• Ultrahigh energy cosmic rays from collisional annihilation revisited
• Astrophysics at the Highest Energy Frontiers