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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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HAWC Collaboration(Albert, A. et al), & Salesa Greus, F. (2020). 3HWC: The Third HAWC Catalog of Very-high-energy Gamma-Ray Sources. Astrophys. J., 905(1), 76–14pp.
Abstract: We present a new catalog of TeV gamma-ray sources using 1523 days of data from the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Observatory. The catalog represents the most sensitive survey of the northern gamma-ray sky at energies above several TeV, with three times the exposure compared to the previous HAWC catalog, 2HWC. We report 65 sources detected at >= 5 sigma significance, along with the positions and spectral fits for each source. The catalog contains eight sources that have no counterpart in the 2HWC catalog, but are within 1 degrees of previously detected TeV emitters, and 20 sources that are more than 1 degrees away from any previously detected TeV source. Of these 20 new sources, 14 have a potential counterpart in the fourth Fermi Large Area Telescope catalog of gamma-ray sources. We also explore potential associations of 3HWC sources with pulsars in the Australia Telescope National Facility (ATNF) pulsar catalog and supernova remnants in the Galactic supernova remnant catalog.
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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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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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Pierre Auger Collaboration(Abreu, P. et al), & Pastor, S. (2013). Identifying clouds over the Pierre Auger Observatory using infrared satellite data. Astropart Phys., 50-52, 92–101.
Abstract: We describe a new method of identifying night-time clouds over the Pierre Auger Observatory using infrared data from the Imager instruments on the GOES-12 and GOES-13 satellites. We compare cloud. identifications resulting from our method to those obtained by the Central Laser Facility of the Auger Observatory. Using our new method we can now develop cloud probability maps for the 3000 km(2) of the Pierre Auger Observatory twice per hour with a spatial resolution of similar to 2.4 km by similar to 5.5 km. Our method could also be applied to monitor cloud cover for other ground-based observatories and for space-based observatories.
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