A Faraway Quasar in the Direction of the Highest Energy Auger Event

TL;DR

This paper investigates the origins of the highest energy cosmic rays, finding that certain distant quasars with high radio luminosity and Faraday rotation are the best candidate sources for these extreme events.

Contribution

It identifies a correlation between the highest energy cosmic ray events and distant quasars with specific properties, suggesting these quasars as potential sources.

Findings

The Auger event points to a distant quasar similar to the one linked to the Fly's Eye event.

A correlation exists between high-energy cosmic rays and specific quasars with high radio luminosity.

Some exotic sources could reach us from gigaparsec distances.

Abstract

The highest energy cosmic ray event reported by the Auger Observatory has an energy of 148 EeV. It does not correlate with any nearby (z$<$0.024) object capable of originating such a high energy event. Intrigued by the fact that the highest energy event ever recorded (by the Fly's Eye collaboration) points to a faraway quasar with very high radio luminosity and large Faraday rotation measurement, we have searched for a similar source for the Auger event. We find that the Auger highest energy event points to a quasar with similar characteristics to the one correlated to the Fly's Eye event. We also find the same kind of correlation for one of the highest energy AGASA events. We conclude that so far these types of quasars are the best source candidates for both Auger and Fly's Eye highest energy events. We discuss a few exotic candidates that could reach us from gigaparsec distances.