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Cosmological Origin for Cosmic Rays Above $10^{19}$ eV

Astrophysics 2009-10-28 v1

Abstract

The cosmic ray spectrum at 1019eV1020eV10^{19}{\rm eV}-10^{20}{\rm eV}, reported by the Fly's Eye and the AGASA experiments, is shown to be consistent with a cosmological distribution of sources of protons, with a power law generation spectrum dlnN/dlnE=2.3±0.5{\rm d}\ln N/{\rm d}\ln E=-2.3\pm0.5 and energy production rate of 4.5±1.5×1044erg Mpc3 yr14.5\pm1.5\times10^{44}{\rm erg}\ {\rm Mpc}^{-3}\ {\rm yr}^{-1}. The two events measured above 1020eV10^{20}{\rm eV} are not inconsistent with this model. Verifying the existence of a ``black-body cutoff'', currently observed with low significance, would require 30\sim30 observation-years with existing experiments, but only 1\sim1 year with the proposed 5000 km2\sim5000\ {\rm km}^2 detectors. For a cosmological source distribution, no anisotropy is expected in the angular distribution of events with energies up to 5×1019eV\sim5\times10^{19}{\rm eV}.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/9508037,
  title  = {Cosmological Origin for Cosmic Rays Above $10^{19}$ eV},
  author = {Eli Waxman},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/9508037},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

uuencoded gz-compressed postscript file, including 2 figures; To appear in the October 10 (1995) issue of the Ap. J. Letters

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