Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
8199889 Physics Letters B 2006 5 Pages PDF
Abstract
The energy spectrum of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECR) is usually calculated for sources with identical properties. Assuming that all sources can accelerate UHECR protons to the same extremely high maximal energy Emax>1020eV and have the steeply falling injection spectrum 1/E2.7, one can reproduce the measured cosmic ray flux above E≳1018eV. We show that relaxing the assumption of identical sources and using a power-law distribution of their maximal energy allows one to explain the observed UHECR spectrum with the injection 1/E2.2 typically predicted by Fermi shock acceleration.
Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering Physics and Astronomy Nuclear and High Energy Physics
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