Extreme Energy Cosmic Rays "Treasure Maps": a new methodology to unveil the nature of cosmic accelerators

TL;DR

This paper proposes a new event-by-event, composition-dependent methodology to analyze extreme energy cosmic rays, aiming to identify their sources and understand intervening magnetic fields, thus advancing cosmic ray astrophysics.

Contribution

It introduces a novel methodology to distinguish steady from transient cosmic ray sources using composition-dependent deflection analysis.

Findings

Method enables source characterization based on cosmic ray deflections.

Potential to differentiate steady and transient sources.

Provides insights into Galactic and extragalactic magnetic fields.

Abstract

Extreme Energy Cosmic Rays, EECRs -- cosmic rays with energies beyond the GZK cutoff (i.e. greater than 100 EeV) are scarce. Only a few of such events have been detected by air shower experiments and the nature of the primary particles are still unknown. Individual EECRs sources become more prominent, relative to the background, as the horizon diminishes. We show that an event-by-event, composition-dependent observatory would allow us to limit the character of the sources and learn about the intervening magnetic fields, as the deflections in the intervening Galactic and extragalactic magnetic fields depend on the nature of the particle. A major goal here is to provide a methodology to distinguish between steady and transient sources.