Testing a Reported Correlation between Arrival Directions of Ultra-high-energy Cosmic Rays and a Flux Pattern from nearby Starburst Galaxies using Telescope Array Data
Abstract
The Pierre Auger Collaboration (Auger) recently reported a correlation between the arrival directions of cosmic rays with energies above 39 EeV and the flux pattern of 23 nearby starburst galaxies (SBGs). In this Letter, we tested the same hypothesis using cosmic rays detected by the Telescope Array experiment (TA) in the 9 yr period from 2008 May to 2017 May. Unlike the Auger analysis, we did not optimize the parameter values but kept them fixed to the best-fit values found by Auger, namely 9.7% for the anisotropic fraction of cosmic rays assumed to originate from the SBGs in the list and 12.°9 for the angular scale of the correlations. The energy threshold that we adopted is 43 EeV, corresponding to 39 EeV in Auger when taking into account the energy-scale difference between two experiments. We find that the TA data is compatible with isotropy to within 1.1σ and with the Auger result to within 1.4σ, meaning that it is not capable to discriminate between these two hypotheses.
- Publication:
-
The Astrophysical Journal
- Pub Date:
- November 2018
- DOI:
- 10.3847/2041-8213/aaebf9
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1809.01573
- Bibcode:
- 2018ApJ...867L..27A
- Keywords:
-
- astroparticle physics;
- cosmic rays;
- galaxies: starburst;
- methods: data analysis;
- Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
- E-Print:
- More accurate title, fixed an inconsistency in the declination range used, with a few figures slightly changing as a result, other minor revisions