Deciphering the Archeological Record: Further Evidence for Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Ray Acceleration in Starburst-Driven Superwinds

TL;DR

This paper explores how current infrared observations of galaxies can reveal properties of starburst-driven superwinds, which are potential sources of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays, supporting recent evidence linking starburst galaxies to cosmic ray acceleration.

Contribution

It demonstrates that analyzing IR emissions from galaxies like NGC 891 can provide evidence for superwind models of cosmic ray acceleration, addressing the archaeological inverse problem.

Findings

NGC 891 shows features consistent with superwind activity.

Infrared emission can be used to infer superwind properties.

Supports the starburst superwind hypothesis for cosmic ray origins.

Abstract

Very recently, the Pierre Auger and Telescope Array collaborations reported strong evidence for a correlation between the highest energy cosmic rays and nearby starburst galaxies, with a global significance post-trial of $4.6\sigma$. It is well known that the collective effect of supernovae and winds from massive stars in the central region of these galaxies drives a galactic-scale superwind that can shock heat and accelerate ambient interstellar or circumgalactic gas. In previous work we showed that, for reasonable source parameters, starburst-driven superwinds can be the carriers of ultra-high-energy cosmic ray acceleration. In this paper we assess the extent to which one can approach the archaeological ``inverse'' problem of deciphering properties of superwind evolution from present-day IR emission of their host galaxies. We show that the Outer Limits galaxy NGC 891 could provide ``smoking gun evidence'' for the starburst-driven superwind model of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays.