Study of ultra-high energy emission from Cygnus X-3 and Hercules X-1

Miscellaneous · Fri Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 1988

OSTI ID:5076974

Dingus, B L

The CYGNUS experiment, consisting of an extensive air shower detector and a muon detector, was built at Los Alamos, New Mexico (latitude 36 N, longitude 107 W, altitude 2310 meters) to search for point sources of ultra-high energy (>104{sup 14} eV) particles. These particles must be long-lived neutral particles because of the long source distances and the presence of the intragalactic magnetic field. Gamma rays are the most likely candidates because of the short neutron lifetime and the small neutrino cross section. Therefore, the muon content of the source showers is examined to determine if these events are muon poor as is expected for gamma-initiated showers. The data set from April 1986 to July 1987 is searched for continual emission from Cygnus X-3 and Hercules X-1, and an upper bound to the flux is determined for both sources. The flux limit for Cygnus X-3, 2.0 {times} 10{sup {minus}13} cm{sup {minus}2} sec{sup {minus}1} above 50 TeV, is lower than previous ultra-high energy observations. Hercules X-1 has never been observed continually at ultra-high energies.

• Research Organization: Maryland Univ., College Park, MD (USA)
• OSTI ID: 5076974
• Resource Relation: Other Information: Thesis (Ph. D)
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
GAMMA RADIATION
POINT SOURCES
ENERGY SPECTRA
EXPERIMENTAL DATA
MEASURING INSTRUMENTS
MEASURING METHODS
MUON DETECTION
CHARGED PARTICLE DETECTION
DATA
DETECTION
ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION
INFORMATION
IONIZING RADIATIONS
NUMERICAL DATA
RADIATION DETECTION
RADIATION SOURCES
RADIATIONS
SPECTRA
640100* - Astrophysics & Cosmology
640101 - Astrophysics & Cosmology- Cosmic Radiation
640200 - Atmospheric Physics