Supergalactic Structure of Multiplets with the Telescope Array Surface Detector

High Energy Astrophysics Institute and Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

^* e-mail: jplundquist@cosmic.utah.edu

Published online: 17 May 2019

Abstract

Evidence of supergalactic structure of multiplets has been found for ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECR) with energies above 10¹⁹ eV using 7 years of data from the Telescope Array (TA) surface detector. The tested hypothesis is that UHECR sources, and intervening magnetic fields, may be correlated with the supergalactic plane, as it is a fit to the average matter density within the GZK horizon. This structure is measured by the average behavior of the strength of intermediate-scale correlations between event energy and position (multiplets). These multiplets are measured in wedge-like shapes on the spherical surface of the fieldof-view to account for uniform and random magnetic fields. The evident structure found is consistent with toy-model simulations of a supergalactic magnetic sheet and the previously published Hot/Coldspot results of TA. The post-trial probability of this feature appearing by chance, on an isotropic sky, is found by Monte Carlo simulation to be ~4.5σ.