Pierre Auger Collaboration(Aab, A. et al), & Pastor, S. (2014). A targeted search for point sources of EeV neutrons. Astrophys. J. Lett., 789(2), L34–7pp.
Abstract: A flux of neutrons from an astrophysical source in the Galaxy can be detected in the Pierre Auger Observatory as an excess of cosmic-ray air showers arriving from the direction of the source. To avoid the statistical penalty for making many trials, classes of objects are tested in combinations as nine “target sets,” in addition to the search for a neutron flux from the Galactic center or from the Galactic plane. Within a target set, each candidate source is weighted in proportion to its electromagnetic flux, its exposure to the Auger Observatory, and its flux attenuation factor due to neutron decay. These searches do not find evidence for a neutron flux from any class of candidate sources. Tabulated results give the combined p-value for each class, with and without the weights, and also the flux upper limit for the most significant candidate source within each class. These limits on fluxes of neutrons significantly constrain models of EeV proton emission from non-transient discrete sources in the Galaxy.
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ANTARES and IceCube Collaborations(Albert, A. et al), Barrios-Marti, J., Coleiro, A., Colomer, M., Hernandez-Rey, J. J., Illuminati, G., et al. (2018). Joint Constraints on Galactic Diffuse Neutrino Emission from the ANTARES and IceCube Neutrino Telescopes. Astrophys. J. Lett., 868(2), L20–7pp.
Abstract: The existence of diffuse Galactic neutrino production is expected from cosmic-ray interactions with Galactic gas and radiation fields. Thus, neutrinos are a unique messenger offering the opportunity to test the products of Galactic cosmic-ray interactions up to energies of hundreds of TeV. Here we present a search for this production using ten years of Astronomy with a Neutrino Telescope and Abyss environmental RESearch (ANTARES) track and shower data, as well as seven years of IceCube track data. The data are combined into a joint likelihood test for neutrino emission according to the KRA(gamma) model assuming a 5 PeV per nucleon Galactic cosmic-ray cutoff. No significant excess is found. As a consequence, the limits presented in this Letter start constraining the model parameter space for Galactic cosmic-ray production and transport.
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Trotta, R., Johannesson, G., Moskalenko, I. V., Porter, T. A., Ruiz de Austri, R., & Strong, A. W. (2011). Constraints on Cosmic-Ray Propagation Models from a Global Bayesian Analysis. Astrophys. J., 729(2), 106–16pp.
Abstract: Research in many areas of modern physics such as, e. g., indirect searches for dark matter and particle acceleration in supernova remnant shocks rely heavily on studies of cosmic rays (CRs) and associated diffuse emissions (radio, microwave, X-rays, gamma-rays). While very detailed numerical models of CR propagation exist, a quantitative statistical analysis of such models has been so far hampered by the large computational effort that those models require. Although statistical analyses have been carried out before using semi-analytical models (where the computation is much faster), the evaluation of the results obtained from such models is difficult, as they necessarily suffer from many simplifying assumptions. The main objective of this paper is to present a working method for a full Bayesian parameter estimation for a numerical CR propagation model. For this study, we use the GALPROP code, the most advanced of its kind, which uses astrophysical information, and nuclear and particle data as inputs to self-consistently predict CRs, gamma-rays, synchrotron, and other observables. We demonstrate that a full Bayesian analysis is possible using nested sampling and Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods (implemented in the SuperBayeS code) despite the heavy computational demands of a numerical propagation code. The best-fit values of parameters found in this analysis are in agreement with previous, significantly simpler, studies also based on GALPROP.
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Pierre Auger Collaboration(Abreu, P. et al), & Pastor, S. (2012). A search for point sources of EeV neutrons. Astrophys. J., 760(2), 148–11pp.
Abstract: A thorough search of the sky exposed at the Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory reveals no statistically significant excess of events in any small solid angle that would be indicative of a flux of neutral particles from a discrete source. The search covers from -90 degrees to +15 degrees in declination using four different energy ranges above 1 EeV (10(18) eV). The method used in this search is more sensitive to neutrons than to photons. The upper limit on a neutron flux is derived for a dense grid of directions for each of the four energy ranges. These results constrain scenarios for the production of ultrahigh energy cosmic rays in the Galaxy.
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ANTARES Collaboration(Adrian-Martinez, S. et al), Bigongiari, C., Dornic, D., Emanuele, U., Gomez-Gonzalez, J. P., Hernandez-Rey, J. J., et al. (2012). Search for Cosmic Neutrino Point Sources with Four Years of Data from the Antares Telescope. Astrophys. J., 760(1), 53–10pp.
Abstract: In this paper, a time-integrated search for point sources of cosmic neutrinos is presented using the data collected from 2007 to 2010 by the ANTARES neutrino telescope. No statistically significant signal has been found and upper limits on the neutrino flux have been obtained. Assuming an E-nu(-2). spectrum, these flux limits are at 1-10x10(-8) GeV cm(-2) s(-1) for declinations ranging from -90 degrees to 40 degrees. Limits for specific models of RX J1713.7-3946 and Vela X, which include information on the source morphology and spectrum, are also given.
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