A lower bound on the number of cosmic ray events required to measure source catalogue correlations

Journal Article · Sat Oct 01 00:00:00 EDT 2016 · Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2016/10/028· OSTI ID:22679426

Dolci, Marco; Romero-Wolf, Andrew ^[1]; Wissel, Stephanie ^[2]

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1. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Dr, Pasadena, CA, 91109 (United States)
2. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, 475 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095 (United States)

Recent analyses of cosmic ray arrival directions have resulted in evidence for a positive correlation with active galactic nuclei positions that has weak significance against an isotropic source distribution. In this paper, we explore the sample size needed to measure a highly statistically significant correlation to a parent source catalogue. We compare several scenarios for the directional scattering of ultra-high energy cosmic rays given our current knowledge of the galactic and intergalactic magnetic fields. We find significant correlations are possible for a sample of >1000 cosmic ray protons with energies above 60 EeV.

• OSTI ID: 22679426
• Journal Information: Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 2016, Issue 10; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1475-7516
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTROPHYSICS
COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
COMPARATIVE EVALUATIONS
CORRELATIONS
COSMIC RADIATION
DISTRIBUTION
EEV RANGE
GALAXY NUCLEI
INTERGALACTIC SPACE
MAGNETIC FIELDS
PROTONS
SCATTERING