Directional search for ultra-high energy photons with the Pierre Auger Observatory

THE PIERRE AUGER COLLABORATION.; S. J. SCIUTTO

Conferencia; 33rd International Cosmic Ray Conference; 2013

The Pierre Auger Observatory, located in Argentina, provides an unprecedented exposure for detectingphotons with energies above 1017 eV over most of the sky. In this work, the information from the surface array ofwater Cherenkov detectors and from the fluorescence telescopes of the Observatory, are combined in a multivariateanalysis to search for photons in the EeV energy range. The arrival directions of candidate photons in the AugerObservatory are here analyzed for the first time. No photon point source is detected. Upper limits on regularlyemitting non-beamed photon sources in the Galaxy do not exceed 0.25 eV cm􀀀2 s􀀀1 and constrain models for theacceleration in the Galaxy of the EeV protons.