On the Origin and Propagation of Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays (Measurements & Prediction Techniques) [Elektronische Ressource] / Nils Nierstenhoefer

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• Physik

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• Publié par: bergische_universitat_wuppertal
• Publié le: 01 janvier 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 23
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 28 Mo

Extrait

Dissertation
On the Origin and Propagation of
Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays
(Measurements & Prediction Techniques)
Nils Nierstenhoefer
Wuppertal, 2011
University of Wuppertal
Supervisor/First reviewer: Prof. Dr. K.-H. Kampert
Second reviewer: Prof. Dr. M. RisseDiese Dissertation kann wie folgt zitiert werden:

urn:nbn:de:hbz:468-20110929-114234-2
[http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn=urn:nbn:de:hbz:468-20110929-114234-2]

Motivation & Preface
20It is a long known fact that cosmic rays reach Earth with tremendous energies of even above 10 eV.
Despite of decades of intensive research, it was not possible to finally reveal the origin of these par-
ticles. The main obstacle in this field is their rare occurrence. This is due to a very steep energy
spectrum. To make this point more clear, one roughly expects to observe less than one particle per
2 20km in one century exceeding energies larger than 10 eV. To overcome the limitation of low statis-
tics, larger and larger cosmic ray detectors have been deployed. Today’s largest cosmic ray detector
is the Pierre Auger observatory (PAO) which was constructed in the Pampa Amarilla in Argentina. It
2covers an area of 3000 km and provides the largest set of observations of ultra-high energy cosmic
rays (UHECR) in history.
A second difficulty in understanding the origin of UHECR should be pointed out: Galactic and extra-
galactic magnetic fields might alter the direction of even the highest energy events in a way that they
do not point back to their source.
In 2007 and 2008, already before the completion of the full detector, the Auger collaboration pub-
lished a set of three important papers [1, 2, 3]. The first paper dealt with the correlation of the arrival
directions of the highest energetic events with the distribution of active galactic nuclei (AGN) closer
than 75Mpc from a catalog compiled by Veron-Cetty and Veron (VC-V) [4]. This very bright type of
galaxies presumably hosts an active black hole. The correlation was maximal for events above 56 EeV
on an angular scale ofY= 3:1 . This energy threshold roughly coincides with the suppression of the
overall energy spectrum above 40 EeV as measured and published by the Auger collaboration in the
second paper. If combined, these two measurements support the hypothesis that the aforementioned
flux suppression is caused by a drastic energy loss due to reactions of the cosmic rays with photons
from the cosmic microwave background (CMB). In the third paper the Auger collaboration reported
that the observed cosmic ray data at the highest energies favors a mixed composition of cosmic rays -
that is, nuclei contribute to the upper end of the energy spectrum.
In conjunction with these results, the following points were frequently discussed:
P1: As stressed in [5], the AGN correlation does not prove that AGN are the sources of UHECR.
The AGN might just act as tracers due to their celestial distribution which is correlated with the
overall distribution of matter and, hence, maybe with the actual sources of UHECR. Thus, it is
merely a proof that the arrival directions of UHECR are not isotropic at a 99% confidence level.
P2: The correlation analysis treats all AGN equally, independently of their astronomical properties.
P3: The r.m.s. deflection angle of UHECR in a random extragalactic magnetic field is indeed ofthe order of a few degrees for protons, but scales with the atomic number Z. Thus, the re-
ported small angular scaleY= 3:1 alone might conflict with the previously mentioned heavier
composition as indicated in the Pierre Auger Observatory measurements. Furthermore, it is
difficult to physically understand the AGN correlation parameters themselves: the proton hy-
pothesis might go along with the observed angular scale, but could contradict the small distance
1 75 Mpc to the correlated AGN which, contradictorily, might imply a heavier composition.
That is, because protons have a longer energy loss length than light or medium sized nuclei in
the intergalactic medium.
P4: The VC-V catalog is not a statistically complete sample of AGN [4].
P5: The correlation study does not realistically model propagation effects such as magnetic deflec-
tion or reactions with ambient photon fields. In particular, UHECR masses are not taken into
account.
Clearly, to overcome this situation and to conclusively solve the cosmic ray puzzle is an effort
which can only be accomplished in a cooperation of many scientist, combing their ideas and abilities.
Following this spirit, this thesis aims at contributing to a set of different projects (in various collabora-
tions). Three of these are the main topics of this thesis. All this work was explicitly chosen to advance
in answering at least one of the conjectures P1-P5 as stated above. To emphasize this, all chapters
shall be shortly described and connected with the corresponding points P1-P5.
In chapter 2, the scan technique which was applied in the aforementioned AGN correlation study by
the Auger collaboration was extended to take into account an additional AGN property (P1 and P2).
This extended scan technique has been applied to the VC-V radio AGN using the radio luminosity
as the fourth scan parameter. Furthermore, a hypothesis test is introduced to monitor the observed
possible signal with independent data.
For a realistic modeling (P5 and P3) tools are needed to predict the effects of the propagation of
UHE-nuclei - especially their mass loss due to photo disintegration and the deflection in extragalactic
magnetic fields. A corresponding public, tool has been developed and is introduced in chapter 3.
In chapter 4, the ongoing work on a catalog of radio and infrared sources is introduced which could
be used as an alternative to the VC-V to reduce the problems as addressed in (P4).
Beforehand, a short overview on the physics of ultra-high energy cosmic rays will be given in
chapter 1. This defines the scientific context of this PhD thesis.
1If interpreted as caused by energy losses (GZK-like effect) and not by a dilution of the anisotropy due to magnetic
deflections.Contents
Motivation & Preface 3
Nomenclature 7
1. Scientific Context of this Thesis 9
1.1. Cosmic Rays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.2. Overview: AGN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.2.1. Observational Classes and Some Features of AGN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
1.2.2. The AGN Unification Scheme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
1.3. Extensive Air Showers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
1.3.1. Electromagnetic Showers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
1.3.2. Hadronic Showers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
1.4. Composition of UHECR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
1.5. Anisotropy and Astronomy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
1.6. The Pierre Auger Observatory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
2. Source Search Using a Binomial Scan Technique 39
2.1. The Binomial Scan Technique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
2.2. Extension 1: The Galactic Plane Cut . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
2.3. 2: The Additional Scan Parameter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
2.4. Four Dimensional Scan Using VC-V Radio AGN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
2.4.1. Data Set . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
2.4.2. Scan in Radio Luminosity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
2.5. Penalized Probability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
2.6. Improvement by the Fourth Scan Parameter? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
2.7. Effect of Reconstruction Uncertainties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
2.8. Hide and Seek . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
2.9. Prescription Principles and Suggestions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
2.9.1. Wald’s Sequential Probability Ratio Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
2.9.2. The Luminosity Shuffling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
2.9.3. Rescanning Using an Enlarged Data Set . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
2.10. Status of the Prescription Using the Latest Data Set . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
2.11. The Radio Threshold and Additional Astronomical Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . 713. Towards a Model Testing Procedure 77
3.1. A Short Introduction to CRPropa version 1.3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
3.2. Propagation of Nuclei with CRPropa: A Guideline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
3.3. Mean Free Path in an Ambient Photon Field. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
3.4. The Numerical Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
3.5. The Photo-Nuclear Cross Sections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
3.6. Overall Convergence of the Mean Free Path Calculations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
3.7. The Thinning Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
3.8. Propagation Algorithm (Automatic Step Size) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
3.9. Appl