An analysis of arrival directions of extensive air showers generated by cosmic rays in the PeV energy range and registered with the EAS MSU and EAS-1000 Prototype arrays reveals a considerable number of regions of excessive flux of cosmic rays. We present results of comparative analysis of regions found in the two data sets, estimate probabilities of their appearance, and discuss correlation of their locations with coordinates of possible astrophysical sources of PeV cosmic rays.
Three regions of excessive flux of cosmic rays with energies of the order of PeV are found in the experimental data of the EAS MSU array at a confidence level greater than 4σ. For two of them, there are similar regions in the experimental data of the EAS-1000 Prototype array. One of the interesting features of the regions is the absence of supernova remnants in their vicinities, traditionally considered as the main sources of Galactic cosmic rays, but the presence of isolated pulsars, some of which are able to accelerate heavy nuclei up to energies close to PeV. In our opinion, this favors the…
An analysis of arrival directions of extensive air showers (EAS) registered with the EAS MSU and EAS-1000 prototype arrays has revealed a region of excessive flux of PeV cosmic rays in the direction toward pulsars PSR J1840+5640 and LAT PSR J1836+5925 at significance level up to 4.5sigma. The first of the pulsars was discovered almost 30 years ago and is a well-studied old radio pulsar located at the distance of 1.7pc from the Solar system. The second pulsar belongs to a new type of pulsars, discovered by the space gamma-ray observatory Fermi, pulsations of which are not observed in optical an…
The PeV gamma ray background produced in the interactions of ultra high energy cosmic rays with the ambient matter and radiations during their propagation in the Milky Way has been calculated in this paper. If the primary ultra high energy cosmic rays are produced from Galactic point sources then those point sources are also emitting PeV gamma rays. We discuss that the detection of galactocentric PeV gamma rays in the future would be a signature of the presence of EeV cosmic accelerators in the Milky Way.
IceCube experiment has detected two neutrinos with energies beween 1-10 PeV. They might have originated from Galactic or extragalactic sources of cosmic rays. In the present work we consider hadronic interactions of the diffuse very high energy cosmic rays with the interstellar matter within our Galaxy to explain the PeV neutrino events detected in IceCube. We also expect PeV gamma ray events along with the PeV neutrino events if the observed PeV neutrinos were produced within our Galaxy in hadronic interactions. PeV gamma rays are unlikely to reach us from sources outside our Galaxy due to pa…
Very recently, the Tibet-AS$γ$ collaboration reported the detection of $γ$ rays from the galactic disk in the energy range of 100 TeV -- 1 PeV. Remarkably, many of these $γ$ rays were observed apart from known very high energy (E$>$ 100 GeV) $γ$-ray sources. These results are best understood if these diffuse $γ$ rays: 1) were produced by a conventional rather than an exotic (i.e. dark matter decay or annihilation) process, 2) have a hadronic rather than a leptonic origin, 3) were produced in impulsive rather than stable sources or, alternatively, in optically thick sources. In addition to that…
The Tibet ASgamma experiment just reported their measurement of sub-PeV diffuse gamma ray emission from the Galactic disk, with the highest energy up to 957 TeV. These gamma-rays are most likely the hadronic origin by cosmic ray interaction with interstellar gas in the Galaxy. This measurement provides direct evidence to the hypothesis that the Galactic cosmic rays can be accelerated beyond PeV energies. In this work, we try to explain the sub-PeV diffuse gamma-ray spectrum within cosmic rays diffusive propagation model. We find there is a tension between the sub-PeV diffuse gamma rays and the…
Cosmic rays around the knee are generally believed to be of galactic origin. Observations on their energy spectrum and chemical composition are important for understanding the acceleration and propagation of these cosmic rays. In addition, it is required to clarify the transition from galactic to extragalactic sources. In this paper, results of recent experiments measuring around the knee will be reviewed along with the detection techniques. The results on the all-particle energy spectrum and composition in the energy range of the knee up to the ankle will be discussed.
We investigate the possibility that the recently detected TeV-PeV neutrino events by IceCube can originate from extragalactic ultra-high-energy cosmic ray interactions with the cosmic microwave background or the UV/optical/IR background. This is done by simulating the propagation of the cosmic rays from their sources to the observer, including the production and propagation of secondary neutrinos and gamma rays. For this purpose we use the publicly available simulation package CRPropa 2.0. We find that in all the scenarios considered here the simulated neutrino flux level remains at least one …
We report, for the first time, the long-awaited detection of diffuse gamma rays with energies between 100 TeV and 1 PeV in the Galactic disk. Particularly, all gamma rays above 398 TeV are observed apart from known TeV gamma-ray sources and compatible with expectations from the hadronic emission scenario in which gamma rays originate from the decay of $π^0$'s produced through the interaction of protons with the interstellar medium in the Galaxy. This is strong evidence that cosmic rays are accelerated beyond PeV energies in our Galaxy and spread over the Galactic disk.
A search for anisotropy at different scales in the arrival directions of cosmic rays with energies above 1 PeV is performed with data of the Tunka-133 array. A number of regions with angular sizes up to approximately 30 degrees that deviate from the uniform background with a statistical significance greater than three standard deviations are found using the shuffling technique both in the complete data set and its subsets in different energy ranges. Some regions with an excess of cosmic rays correlate with the distribution of possible cosmic ray sources. A comparison of the results with a simi…
The HAWC observatory is an air-shower detector, which is designed to study both astrophysical gamma-rays in the TeV region and galactic cosmic rays in the energy interval from 1 TeV to 1 PeV. This energy regime is quite interesting for cosmic ray research, since indirect observations overlap with direct measurements, which offers the opportunity for cross calibration and studies of experimental systematic errors in both techniques. One quantity that could help for this purpose is the all-particle energy spectrum of cosmic rays. In this work, we present an update of HAWC measurements on the tot…
The origin of the knee in cosmic ray spectrum remains to be an unsolved fundamental problem. There are various kinds of models which predict different break positions and the compositions of the knee. In this work, we suggest to use diffuse $γ$-rays and neutrinos as probes to test these models. Based on several typical types of the composition models, the diffuse $γ$-ray and neutrino spectra are calculated, which show distinctive cutoff behaviours at energies from tens of TeV to multi-PeV. The expected flux will be observable by the newly upgraded Tibet-AS$γ$+MD (muon detector) experiment as w…
Searches for large-scale anisotropies in the distribution of arrival directions of cosmic rays detected above $\simeq 10 $PeV at the Pierre Auger Observatory are presented. Although no significant deviation from isotropy is revealed at present, some of the measurements suggest that future data will provide hints for large-scale anisotropies over a wide energy range. Those anisotropies would have amplitudes which are too small to be significantly observed within the current statistics. Assuming that the cosmic ray anisotropy is dominated by dipole and quadrupole moments in the EeV-energy range,…
Recent results of Milagro, Tibet, ARGO-YBJ and IceCube experiments on the small-scale anisotropy of Galactic cosmic rays (CRs) with energies from units up to a few hundred TeV arise a question on a possible nature of the observed phenomenon, as well as on the anisotropy of CRs at higher energies. An analysis of a small-scale anisotropy of CRs with energies at around PeV registered with the EAS MSU array presented in the article, reveals a number of regions with an excessive flux. A typical size of the regions varies from 3 up to 12 degrees. We study correlation of these regions with positions …
Exploring the high energy frontiers of the Milky Way with ground-based gamma-ray astronomy: PeVatrons and the quest for the origin of Galactic cosmic-rays
One attractive scenario for the excess of sub-PeV/PeV neutrinos recently reported by IceCube is that they are produced by cosmic rays in starburst galaxies colliding with the dense interstellar medium. These proton-proton ($pp$) collisions also produce high-energy gamma-rays, which finally contribute to the diffuse high-energy gamma-ray background. We calculate the diffuse gamma-ray flux with a semi-analytic approach and consider that the very high energy gamma-rays will be absorbed in the galaxies and converted into electron-position pairs, which then lose almost all their energy through sync…
The identification of active PeVatrons, hadronic particle accelerators reaching the knee of the cosmic-ray spectrum (at the energy of few PeV), is crucial to understand the origin of cosmic rays in the Galaxy. In this context, we report on new H.E.S.S. observations of the PeVatron candidate HESS J1702-420, which reveal the presence of gamma-rays up to 100 TeV. This is the first time in the history of H.E.S.S. that photons with such high energy are clearly detected. Remarkably, the new deep observations allowed the discovery of a new gamma-ray source component, called HESS J1702-420A, that was …
Interstellar clouds can act as target material for hadronic cosmic rays; gamma-rays produced through inelastic proton-proton collisions and spatially associated with the clouds provide a key indicator of efficient particle acceleration. However, even for PeVatron sources reaching PeV energies, the system of cloud and accelerator must fulfil several conditions in order to produce a detectable gamma-ray flux. In this contribution, we characterise the necessary properties of both cloud and accelerator. Using available Supernova Remnant (SNR) and interstellar cloud catalogues, and assuming particl…
Carpet-2 is an air-shower array at Baksan Valley, Russia, equipped with a large-area (175 m^2) muon detector, which makes it possible to separate primary photons from hadrons. We report the first results of the search for primary photons with energies E_γ>1 PeV, directionally associated with IceCube high-energy neutrino events, in the data obtained in 3080 days of Carpet-2 live time.
The Tibet AS$γ$ collaboration has reported a diffuse $γ$-ray emission signal from the Galactic Plane. We consider the possibility that the diffuse emission from the outer Galactic Plane at the highest energies is produced by cosmic rays spreading from a single supernova-type source either in the Local or Perseus arm of the Milky Way. We show that anisotropic diffusion of multi-PeV cosmic rays along the Galactic magnetic field can produce an extended source spanning ten(s) of degrees on the sky, with a flux-per-unit-solid-angle consistent with Tibet AS$γ$ measurements. Observations of this new …
In this paper we estimate the flux of PeV neutrinos and gamma-rays from magnetar polar caps, assuming that ions/protons are injected, and accelerated in these regions and interact with the radiative background. The present study takes into account the effect of the photon splitting mechanisms that should modify the radiative background, and enhance the neutrino and gamma-ray fluxes at PeV energies, with a view to explain the PeV neutrino events detected in IceCube. The results indicate that in near future, possibility of any significant excess of neutrino events from a magnetar in Milky Way is…
Early results of the search for E_γ>1 PeV cosmic photons from point sources with the data of Carpet-2, an air-shower array equipped with a 175 m^2 muon detector, are presented. They include 95% CL upper limits on PeV photon fluxes from stacked directions of high-energy IceCube neutrino events and from four predefined sources, Crab, Cyg X-3, Mrk 421 and Mrk 501. An insignificant excess of events from Mrk 421 will be further monitored. Prospects of the use of the upgraded installation, Carpet-3 (410 m^2 muon detector), scheduled to start data taking in 2019, for searches of E_γ>100 TeV photons, …
Cosmic ray interactions that produce high-energy neutrinos also inevitably generate high-energy gamma rays, which finally contribute to the diffuse high-energy gamma-ray background after they escape the sources. It was recently found that, the high flux of neutrinos at $\sim30$ TeV detected by IceCube lead to a cumulative gamma-ray flux exceeding the Fermi isotropic gamma-ray background at 10-100 GeV, implying that the neutrinos are produced by hidden sources of cosmic rays, where GeV-TeV gamma-rays are not transparent. Here we suggest that relativistic jets in tidal disruption events (TDEs) o…
Using SKA-Low to Detect PeV Gamma-rays from Galactic Sources
Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院紫金山天文台）；University of Science and Technology of China（中国科学技术大学）；University of Manchester（曼彻斯特大学）；Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB)（布鲁塞尔自由大学）；Radboud University Nijmegen（奈梅亨拉德堡德大学）；Curtin University（科廷大学）；University of Groningen（格罗宁根大学）；Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON)（荷兰射电天文研究所）；Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)（卡尔斯鲁厄理工学院）；Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur（坎普尔印度理工学院）；Khalifa University（哈利法大学）；Can Tho University（芹苳大学）；Nanjing University（南京大学）；Xidian University（西安电子科技大学）；Nagoya University（名古屋大学）
PeV extended emission around Galactic PeVatrons and echos of their flares
Université Paris Cité（巴黎西岱大学）；CNRS, Astroparticule et Cosmologie（法国国家科学研究中心，亚原子粒子与宇宙学）；Laboratory of Astrophysics, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne（洛桑联邦理工学院天体物理实验室）；Institute for Cosmic Ray Research, The University of Tokyo（东京大学宇宙射线研究所）
The multi-TeV $γ$-rays from the Galactic Center (GC) have a cutoff at tens of TeV, whereas the diffuse emission has no such cutoff, which is regarded as an indication of PeV proton acceleration by the HESS experiment. It is important to understand the inconsistency and study the possibility that PeV cosmic-ray acceleration could account for the apparently contradictory point and diffuse $γ$-ray spectra. In this work, we propose that the cosmic rays are accelerated up to $>$PeV in GC. The interaction between cosmic rays and molecular clouds is responsible for the multi-TeV $γ$-ray emissions fro…
The interaction of high energy cosmic rays with the Earth's atmosphere produces extensive air showers of secondary particles with a large muon component. By exploiting the sensitivity of neutrino telescopes to high energy muons, it is possible to use these detectors for precision cosmic ray studies. The high rate of cosmic-ray muon events provides a high-statistics data sample that can be used to look for anisotropy in the arrival directions of the parent particles at the per-mille level. This paper reports on the observation of anisotropy in the cosmic ray data collected with the IceCube neut…
We study the frequently used assumption in multi-messenger astrophysics that the gamma-ray and neutrino fluxes are directly connected because they are assumed to be produced by the same photohadronic production chain. An interesting candidate source for this test is the flat-spectrum radio quasar PKS B1424-418, which recently called attention of a potential correlation between an IceCube PeV-neutrino event and its burst phase. We simulate both the multi-waveband photon and the neutrino emission from this source using a self-consistent radiation model. We demonstrate that a simple hadronic mode…
X-ray Binaries: a potential dominant contributor to the cosmic ray spectral knee structure
Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院高能物理研究所）；University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学）；National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院国家天文台）；Southwest Jiaotong University（西南交通大学）；Tangshan University（唐山学院）；TIANFU Cosmic Ray Research Center（天府宇宙线研究中心）
The role of nearby galactic sources, the supernova remnants, in formation of observed energy spectrum and anisotropy of high-energy cosmic rays is studied. The list of these sources is made up based on radio, X-ray and gamma-ray catalogues. The distant sources are treated statistically as ensemble of sources with random positions and ages. The source spectra are defined based on the modern theory of cosmic ray acceleration in supernova remnants while the propagation of cosmic rays in the interstellar medium is described in the frameworks of galactic diffusion model. Calculations of anisotropy …
The IceCube collaboration has reported neutrinos with energies between ~30 TeV and a few PeV that are significantly enhanced over the cosmic-ray induced atmospheric background. Viable high-energy neutrino sources must contain very high-energy and ultra-high energy cosmic rays while efficiently making PeV neutrinos. Gamma-ray Bursts (GRBs) and blazars have been considered as candidate cosmic-ray accelerators. GRBs, including low-luminosity GRBs, can be efficient PeV neutrino emitters for low bulk Lorentz factor outflows, although the photopion production efficiency needs to be tuned to simultan…
The observed very high energy spectra of distant blazars are well described by secondary gamma rays produced in line-of-sight interactions of cosmic rays with background photons. In the absence of the cosmic-ray contribution, one would not expect to observe very hard spectra from distant sources, but the cosmic ray interactions generate very high energy gamma rays relatively close to the observer, and they are not attenuated significantly. The same interactions of cosmic rays are expected to produce a flux of neutrinos with energies peaked around 1 PeV. We show that the diffuse isotropic neutr…
Supernova remnants (SNRs) have long been considered to be the dominant source of Galactic cosmic rays, which implied that they provided most of the energy to power cosmic rays as well as being PeVatrons. The lack of evidence for PeV cosmic rays in SNRs, as well as theoretical considerations, has made this scenario untenable. At the same time the latest LHAASO and other gamma-ray results suggest that PeVatrons lurk inside starforming regions. Here I will discuss why SNRs should still be considered the main sources of Galactic cosmic rays at least up to 10 TeV, but that the cosmic-ray data allow…
The supernova remnant hypothesis for the origin of Galactic cosmic rays has passed several tests, but the firm identification of a supernova remnant pevatron, considered to be a decisive step to prove the hypothesis, is still missing. While a lot of hope has been placed in next-generation instruments operating in the multi-TeV range, it is possible that current gamma-ray instruments, operating in the TeV range, could pinpoint these objects or, most likely, identify a number of promising targets for instruments of next generation. Starting from the assumption that supernova remnants are indeed …
The existence of a "knee" at energy ~1 PeV in the cosmic-ray spectrum suggests the presence of Galactic PeV proton accelerators called "PeVatrons". Supernova Remnant (SNR) G106.3+2.7 is a prime candidate for one of these. The recent detection of very high energy (0.1-100 TeV) gamma rays from G106.3+2.7 may be explained either by the decay of neutral pions or inverse Compton scattering by relativistic electrons. We report an analysis of 12 years of Fermi-LAT gamma-ray data which shows that the GeV-TeV gamma-ray spectrum is much harder and requires a different total electron energy than the radi…
Observations of TeV--PeV-energy cosmic neutrinos by the IceCube observatory have suggested that extragalactic cosmic-ray sources should have an optical depth greater than $\sim$0.01 and contribute to more than 10\% of the observed bulk of cosmic rays at 10 PeV. If the spectrum of cosmic rays from these extragalactic sources extends well beyond 1 EeV, the neutrino flux indicates that extragalactic cosmic-ray protons are dominant in the observed total cosmic-ray flux at 1 EeV. Among known powerful astronomical objects, including gamma-ray bursters (GRBs), only flat-spectrum radio quasars could (…
Results of a blind search for localized regions of an excessive flux of cosmic rays in the energy range from 50 TeV to 20 PeV with the data of the FIAN KLARA-Chronotron experiment, the EAS MSU array and the Prototype of the EAS-1000 array are presented. A number of regions with a significant excess of the registered flux over an expected isotropic background are found. Some of the regions are present in at least two of the data sets considered.
New data on the absolute value on the inelastic proton-air cross section at 10 PeV are presented. Conclusion is made about the growth with energy of the inelastic proton-air cross section according to comparisons with experimental data were obtained at the Tien Shan complex array on various components of extensive air showers: hadrons, Cherenkov light and electrons with many different calculated models of cosmic rays interactions at the atmosphere. The analysis showed that the rise conforms to 7-9 % per one order of the energy from 0.2 TeV (accelerators with fixed targets) to 10 PeV (EAS cosmi…
Pierre Auger observatory reported the distribution of arrival directions of the highest energy cosmic rays. These events were collected in 10 years of operations with declinations between -90$^\circ$ and +45$^\circ$. The IceCube neutrino telescope reported the detection of 82 extraterrestrial neutrinos in the High-Energy Starting Events catalog. The highest-energy neutrino event (IC35) reported in this catalog had an energy of 2004$^{+236}_{-262}$ TeV and its reconstruction was centered at RA=$208.4^\circ$ and DEC=$-55.8^\circ$ (J2000). Being Centaurus A the nearest radio-loud active Galactic …
Although supernova remnants remain the main suspects as sources of Galactic cosmic rays up to the knee, the supernova paradigm still has many loose ends. The weakest point in this construction is the possibility that individual supernova remnants can accelerate particles to the rigidity of the knee, $\sim 10^{6}$ GV. This scenario heavily relies upon the possibility to excite current driven non-resonant hybrid modes while the shock is still at the beginning of the Sedov phase. These modes can enhance the rate of particle scattering thereby leading to potentially very-high maximum energies. Her…
The discovery of diffuse sub-PeV gamma-rays by the Tibet AS$_γ$ Collaboration promises to revolutionize our understanding of the high-energy astrophysical universe. It has been shown that these data broadly agree with prior theoretical expectations. We study the impact of this discovery on a well-motivated new physics scenario: PeV-scale decaying dark matter (DM). Considering a wide range of final states in DM decay, a number of DM density profiles, and numerous astrophysical background models, we find that these data provide the most stringent limit on DM lifetime for various Standard Model f…
The measurement of proton plus helium and all-particle energy spectra in the range $20\,$ TeV to $5 \,$PeV and $80 \,$TeV to $5 \,$PeV respectively are presented. Data taken by the ARGO-YBJ detector in the 2010 year have been analyzed. The ARGO-YBJ experiment (Tibet, P. R. China) has been taking data for more than five years by means of a full-coverage array of RPC detectors. The discrimination between showers produced by light and heavy primaries has been performed by looking at the lateral particle density close to the core region. A Bayesian unfolding technique was therefore applied to the …
