Black-Hole Jets of Ultrahigh Energy Cosmic Rays: Clues from Auger and Fermi

by Charles Dermer (U.S. Naval Research Laboratory)

Friday 12 Jun 2009, 10:30 → 12:00 Europe/Stockholm

FA31

The puzzle of the ultrahigh energy (E >> 10^17 eV) cosmic rays from beyond the Galaxy remains unsolved, though large steps were taken in 2007 when the Pierre Auger Observatory found enhancements of > 60 EeV UHECRs with local, d < 75 Mpc, AGN tracers of matter. Black-hole jet sources of UHECRs such as blazar AGNs, radio galaxies, and gamma-ray bursts that are more apparently luminous than 1e46 ergs/s must be found within ~100 Mpc to be viable (using notions of acceleration as pioneered by Enrico Fermi). This talk reviews the crucial issues in GZK (Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin) studies, brought in focus by Auger results, and shows how hadronic features of UHECR acceleration in black-hole jet sources may already be seen in Fermi Gamma ray Space Telescope data of GRBs and gamma-ray data of blazars and radio galaxies like Centaurus A. (Host: Magnus Axelsson)

Streaming video