Single source scenario describing the very end of the cosmic ray energy spectrum

FZU - Institute of Physics of the Czech academy of sciences, Na Slovance 1999/2, Prague, Czech Republic

^* Corresponding author: bakalova@fzu.cz

Published online: 28 April 2023

Abstract

The energy spectrum of cosmic rays is steeply falling with a suppression of the flux at the highest energies caused by energy losses during propagation or by reaching the maximum energy of cosmic accelerators. The energy spectrum at the highest energies is currently measured with high precision by two experiments, Telescope Array in the Northern hemisphere and the Pierre Auger Observatory in the Southern hemisphere. In this work, we study the possibility of explaining the shape of the energy spectrum above 10^19.5 eV measured by the Pierre Auger Observatory with a single source. Using CRPropa 3 numerical simulations of cosmic ray propagation in the Universe we show possible features of such a single source that would be able to create a shape of the energy spectrum compatible with the measurement including limitations on the source distance, spectral index and mass composition.