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Pierre Auger Collaboration(Abreu, P. et al), & Pastor, S. (2012). A search for anisotropy in the arrival directions of ultra high energy cosmic rays recorded at the Pierre Auger Observatory. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 04(4), 040–21pp.
Abstract: Observations of cosmic rays arrival directions made with the Pierre Auger Observatory have previously provided evidence of anisotropy at the 99% CL using the correlation of ultra high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) with objects drawn from the Veron-Cetty Veron catalog. In this paper we report on the use of three catalog independent methods to search for anisotropy. The 2pt-L, 2pt+ and 3pt methods, each giving a different measure of self-clustering in arrival directions, were tested on mock cosmic ray data sets to study the impacts of sample size and magnetic smearing on their results, accounting for both angular and energy resolutions. If the sources of UHECRs follow the same large scale structure as ordinary galaxies in the local Universe and if UHECRs are deflected no more than a few degrees, a study of mock maps suggests that these three method can efficiently respond to the resulting anisotropy with a P-value = 1.0% or smaller with data sets as few as 100 events. using data taken from January 1, 2004 to July 31, 2010 we examined the 20, 30, ... , 110 highest energy events with a corresponding minimum energy threshold of about 49.3 EeV. The minimum P-values found were 13.5% using the 2pt-L method, 1.0% using the 2pt+ method and 1.1% using the 3pt method for the highest 100 energy events. In view of the multiple (correlated) scans performed on the data set, these catalog-independent methods do not yield strong evidence of anisotropy in the highest energy cosmic rays.
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Pierre Auger Collaboration(Abreu, P. et al), & Pastor, S. (2013). Interpretation of the depths of maximum of extensive air showers measured by the Pierre Auger Observatory. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 02(2), 026–20pp.
Abstract: To interpret the mean depth of cosmic ray air shower maximum and its dispersion, we parametrize those two observables as functions of the first two moments of the ln A distribution. We examine the goodness of this simple method through simulations of test mass distributions. The application of the parameterization to Pierre Auger Observatory data allows one to study the energy dependence of the mean ln A and of its variance under the assumption of selected hadronic interaction models. We discuss possible implications of these dependences in term of interaction models and astrophysical cosmic ray sources.
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Pierre Auger Collaboration(Abreu, P. et al), & Pastor, S. (2013). Bounds on the density of sources of ultra-high energy cosmic rays from the Pierre Auger Observatory. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 05(5), 009–19pp.
Abstract: We derive lower bounds on the density of sources of ultra-high energy cosmic rays from the lack of significant clustering in the arrival directions of the highest energy events detected at the Pierre Auger Observatory. The density of uniformly distributed sources of equal intrinsic intensity was found to be larger than similar to (0.06 – 5) x 10(-4) Mpc(-3) at 95% CL, depending on the magnitude of the magnetic defections. Similar bounds, in the range (0.2 – 7) x 10(-4) Mpc(-3), were obtained for sources following the local matter distribution.
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Di Mauro, M., Donato, F., Fornengo, N., Lineros, R. A., & Vittino, A. (2014). Interpretation of AMS-02 electrons and positrons data. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 04(4), 006–33pp.
Abstract: We perform a combined analysis of the recent AMS-02 data on electrons, positrons, electrons plus positrons and positron fraction, in a self-consistent framework where we realize a theoretical modeling of all the astrophysical components that can contribute to the observed fluxes in the whole energy range. The primary electron contribution is modeled through the sum of an average flux from distant sources and the fluxes from the local supernova remnants in the Green catalog. The secondary electron and positron fluxes originate from interactions on the interstellar medium of primary cosmic rays, for which we derive a novel determination by using AMS-02 proton and helium data. Primary positrons and electrons from pulsar wind nebulae in the ATNF catalog are included and studied in terms of their most significant (while loosely known) properties and under different assumptions (average contribution from the whole catalog, single dominant pulsar, a few dominant pulsars). We obtain a remarkable agreement between our various modeling and the AMS-02 data for all types of analysis, demonstrating that the whole AMS-02 leptonic data admit a self-consistent interpretation in terms of astrophysical contributions.
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Fornengo, N., Lineros, R. A., Regis, M., & Taoso, M. (2014). The isotropic radio background revisited. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 04(4), 008–36pp.
Abstract: We present an extensive analysis on the determination of the isotropic radio background. We consider six different radio maps, ranging from 22 MHz to 2.3 GHz and covering a large fraction of the sky. The large scale emission is modeled as a linear combination of an isotropic component plus the Galactic synchrotron radiation and thermal bremsstrahlung. Point-like and extended sources are either masked or accounted for by means of a template. We find a robust estimate of the isotropic radio background, with limited scatter among different Galactic models. The level of the isotropic background lies significantly above the contribution obtained by integrating the number counts of observed extragalactic sources. Since the isotropic component dominates at high latitudes, thus making the profile of the total emission flat, a Galactic origin for such excess appears unlikely. We conclude that, unless a systematic offset is present in the maps, and provided that our current understanding of the Galactic synchrotron emission is reasonable, extragalactic sources well below the current experimental threshold seem to account for the majority of the brightness of the extragalactic radio sky.
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Pierre Auger Collaboration(Aab, A. et al), & Pastor, S. (2014). Reconstruction of inclined air showers detected with the pierre Auger Observatory. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 08(8), 019–32pp.
Abstract: We describe the method devised to reconstruct inclined cosmic-ray air showers with zenith angles greater than 60 degrees detected with the surface array of the Pierre Auger Observatory. The measured signals at the ground level are fitted to muon density distributions predicted with atmospheric cascade models to obtain the relative shower size as an overall normalization parameter. The method is evaluated using simulated showers to test its performance. The energy of the cosmic rays is calibrated using a sub-sample of events reconstructed with both the fluorescence and surface array techniques. The reconstruction method described here provides the basis of complementary analyses including an independent measurement of the energy spectrum of ultra-high energy cosmic rays using very inclined events collected by the Pierre Auger Observatory.
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Double Chooz collaboration(Abrahao, T. et al), & Novella, P. (2017). Cosmic-muon characterization and annual modulation measurement with Double Chooz detectors. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 02(2), 017–20pp.
Abstract: A study on cosmic muons has been performed for the two identical near and far neutrino detectors of the Double Chooz experiment, placed at similar to 120 and similar to 300 m. w.e. underground respectively, including the corresponding simulations using the MUSIC simulation package. This characterization has allowed us to measure the muon flux reaching both detectors to be (3.64 +/- 0.04) x 10(-4) cm(-2) s(-1) for the near detector and (7.00 +/- 0.05) x 10(-5) cm(-2) s(-1) for the far one. The seasonal modulation of the signal has also been studied observing a positive correlation with the atmospheric temperature, leading to an effective temperature coefficient of alpha(T) = 0.212 +/- 0.024 and 0.355 +/- 0.019 for the near and far detectors respectively. These measurements, in good agreement with expectations based on theoretical models, represent one of the first measurements of this coefficient in shallow depth installations.
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ANTARES Collaboration(Albert, A. et al), Colomer, M., Gozzini, R., Hernandez-Rey, J. J., Illuminati, G., Khan-Chowdhury, N. R., et al. (2021). Monte Carlo simulations for the ANTARES underwater neutrino telescope. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 01(1), 064–20pp.
Abstract: Monte Carlo simulations are a unique tool to check the response of a detector and to monitor its performance. For a deep-sea neutrino telescope, the variability of the environmental conditions that can affect the behaviour of the data acquisition system must be considered, in addition to a reliable description of the active parts of the detector and of the features of physics events, in order to produce a realistic set of simulated events. In this paper, the software tools used to produce neutrino and cosmic ray signatures in the telescope and the strategy developed to represent the time evolution of the natural environment and of the detector efficiency are described.
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Jueid, A., Kip, J., Ruiz de Austri, R., & Skands, P. (2023). Impact of QCD uncertainties on antiproton spectra from dark-matter annihilation. J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 04(4), 068–15pp.
Abstract: Dark-matter particles that annihilate or decay can undergo complex sequences of processes, including strong and electromagnetic radiation, hadronisation, and hadron de-cays, before particles that are stable on astrophysical time scales are produced. Antiprotons produced in this way may leave footprints in experiments such as AMS-02. Several groups have reported an excess of events in the antiproton flux in the rigidity range of 10-20 GV. However, the theoretical modeling of baryon production is not straightforward and relies in part on phenomenological models in Monte Carlo event generators. In this work, we assess the impact of QCD uncertainties on the spectra of antiprotons from dark-matter annihila-tion. As a proof-of-principle, we show that for a two-parameter model that depends only on the thermally-averaged annihilation cross section ((o -v)) and the dark-matter mass (Mx), QCD uncertainties can affect the best-fit mass by up to ti 14% (with large uncertainties for large DM masses), depending on the choice of Mx and the annihilation channel (bb over bar or W+W-), and (o -v) by up to ti 10%. For comparison, changes to the underlying diffusion parameters are found to be within 1%-5%, and the results are also quite resilient to the choice of cosmic-ray propagation model. These findings indicate that QCD uncertainties need to be included in future DM analyses. To facilitate full-fledged analyses, we provide the spectra in tabulated form including QCD uncertainties and code snippets to perform mass interpolations and quick DM fits. The code can be found in this GitHub [1] repository.
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Bertolez-Martinez, T., Arguelles, C., Esteban, I., Lopez-Pavon, J., Martinez-Soler, I., & Salvado, J. (2023). IceCube and the origin of ANITA-IV events. J. High Energy Phys., 07(7), 005–24pp.
Abstract: Recently, the ANITA collaboration announced the detection of new, unsettling upgoing Ultra-High-Energy (UHE) events. Understanding their origin is pressing to ensure success of the incoming UHE neutrino program. In this work, we study their internal consistency and the implications of the lack of similar events in IceCube. We introduce a generic, simple parametrization to study the compatibility between these two observatories in Standard Model-like and Beyond Standard Model scenarios: an incoming flux of particles that interact with Earth nucleons with cross section sigma, producing particle showers along with long-lived particles that decay with lifetime iota and generate a shower that explains ANITA observations. We find that the ANITA angular distribution imposes significant constraints, and when including null observations from IceCube only iota similar to 10(-3)-10(-2) s and sigma similar to 10(-33) -10(-32) cm(2) can explain the data. This hypothesis is testable with future IceCube data. Finally, we discuss a specific model that can realize this scenario. Our analysis highlights the importance of simultaneous observations by high-energy optical neutrino telescopes and new UHE radio detectors to uncover cosmogenic neutrinos or discover new physics.
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