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Building a galactic atlas of potential cosmic ray sources
Mand, Baiza Mayotte, Eric San Martin, Nicolas
Mand, Baiza
Mayotte, Eric
San Martin, Nicolas
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2025-04
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Cosmic rays, primarily nuclei of common elements from space, are constantly showering the entire Earth. Some have over ten million times the energy of anything produced by the Large Hadron Collider. Ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) are thought to be produced by supernovae, supermassive black holes, or even extragalactic sources such as gamma-ray bursts, active galactic nuclei, or unknown processes in starburst galaxies. In this project, we analyzed UHECRs that hit Earth after following a trajectory guided by the galactic magnetic field. Our work supports the hunt for the highest energy galactic cosmic ray accelerator. To do this, we used CRPropa3, a Python-driven simulation framework built to study the propagation of ultra-high-energy nuclei through the cosmos. In our simulations, we used the JF12 and UF23 galactic magnetic field models to isotropically simulate antiprotons emitted from Earth with between 1 and 10 EeV (1 EeV = 10^18 eV) of energy. By cataloging each particle interaction with one of the observer spheres placed throughout the galaxy, we generated data that works towards our ability to make predictions about which galactic sources produce the highest energy cosmic rays observed on Earth. By creating a library of potential sources featuring this data, we hope to train a machine-learning model that can utilize real-world cosmic ray data produced by the Pierre Auger Observatory to make predictions about the sources of UHECRs.
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