The Sydney University Giant Air-shower Recorder (SUGAR) measured the energy spectrum of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays reconstructed from muon-detector readings, while the Pierre Auger Observatory, ...looking at the same Southern sky, used the calorimetric fluorescence method for the same purpose. Comparison of their two spectra allows us to reconstruct the empirical dependence of the number of muons in a vertical shower on the primary energy for energies between 1017 and 1018.5 eV. We compare this dependence with the predictions of hadronic interaction models QGSJET-II-04, EPOS-LHC and SIBYLL-2.3c. The empirically determined number of muons with energies above 0.75 GeV in a vertical shower exceeds the simulated one by the factors ∼1.7 and ∼1.3 for 1017 eV proton and iron primaries, respectively. The muon excess grows moderately with the primary energy, increasing by an additional factor of ∼1.2 for 1018.5 eV primaries.
Abstract
Baikal-GVD is a gigaton-scale underwater neutrino telescope currently under construction in Lake Baikal. Its principal components are optical modules, registering photons propagating through ...the telescope’s working volume. Part of the activations of the optical modules are due to the natural luminescence of the water, and thus appear as noise in the data. We present a neural network, which efficiently rejects this background and reaches 97% signal purity (precision) and 99% survival efficiency (recall) on the Monte-Carlo data. The neural network has a U-net like architecture based on the temporal structure of optical modules activations.
Results of the search for ∼(1016–1017.5) eV primary cosmic-ray photons with the data of the Moscow State University (MSU) Extensive Air Shower (EAS) array are reported. The full-scale reanalysis of ...the data with modern simulations of the installation does not confirm previous indications of the excess of gamma-ray candidate events. Upper limits on the corresponding gamma-ray flux are presented. The limits are among the most stringent published ones at energies ∼1017 eV.
We report on a measurement of the cosmic ray energy spectrum by the Telescope Array Low-Energy Extension (TALE) air fluorescence detector (FD). The TALE air FD is also sensitive to the Cherenkov ...light produced by shower particles. Low-energy cosmic rays, in the PeV energy range, are detectable by TALE as Cherenkov events. Using these events, we measure the energy spectrum from a low energy of ∼2 PeV to an energy greater than 100 PeV. Above 100 PeV, TALE can detect cosmic rays using air fluorescence. This allows for the extension of the measurement to energies greater than a few EeV. In this paper, we describe the detector, explain the technique, and present results from a measurement of the spectrum using ∼1000 hr of observation. The observed spectrum shows a clear steepening near 1017.1 eV, along with an ankle-like structure at 1016.2 eV. These features present important constraints on the origin of galactic cosmic rays and on propagation models. The feature at 1017.1 eV may also mark the end of the galactic cosmic ray flux and the start of the transition to extragalactic sources.
UHECR propagation in a turbulent intergalactic magnetic field in the small-angle scattering regime is well understood for propagation distances much larger than the field coherence scale. The ...diffusion theory doesn’t work and unexpected effects may appear for propagation over smaller distances, from a few and up to 10–20 coherence scales. We study the propagation of UHECRs in this regime, which may be relevant for intermediate mass UHECR nuclei and nG scale intergalactic magnetic fields with 1 Mpc coherence scale. We found that the trajectories form a non-trivial caustic-like pattern with strong deviation from isotropy. Thus, measurements of the flux from a source at a given distance will depend on the position of the observer.
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