A targeted search for point sources of eev neutrons

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 ni...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Arqueros Martínez, Fernando, Blanco Ramos, Francisco, García Pinto, Diego, Minaya Flores, Ignacio Andrés, Ortiz Ramis, Montserrat, Rosado Vélez, Jaime, Vázquez Peñas, José Ramón
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2014
País:España
Institución:Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM)
Repositorio:Docta Complutense
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:docta.ucm.es:20.500.14352/34791
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/34791
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:539.1
Cosmic-rays
Catalog
Origin
Física nuclear
2207 Física Atómica y Nuclear
Descripción
Sumario: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.