A Targeted Search for Point Sources of EeV Neutrons.

THE PIERRE AUGER COLLABORATION.; S. J. SCIUTTO

The Astrophysical Journal Letters

The American Astronomical Society

Año: 2014 vol. 789 p. 34 - 41

2041-8205

A flux of neutrons from an astrophysical source in the Galaxy can be detected in the Pierre Auger Observatory asan excess of cosmic-ray air showers arriving from the direction of the source. To avoid the statistical penalty formaking many trials, classes of objects are tested in combinations as nine ?target sets,? in addition to the search fora neutron flux from the Galactic center or from the Galactic plane. Within a target set, each candidate source isweighted in proportion to its electromagnetic flux, its exposure to the Auger Observatory, and its flux attenuationfactor due to neutron decay. These searches do not find evidence for a neutron flux from any class of candidatesources. Tabulated results give the combined p-value for each class, with and without the weights, and also theflux upper limit for the most significant candidate source within each class. These limits on fluxes of neutronssignificantly constrain models of EeV proton emission from non-transient discrete sources in the Galaxy.