Speakers
Description
Astrophysical neutral particles, such as neutrons, provide a unique opportunity to trace back directly to their origins since they are not deflected by magnetic fields after being produced through interactions of charged cosmic rays in the immediate vicinity of their acceleration sites. Neutrons, being unstable particles, undergo decay, but at high energies they can travel considerable distances—approximately 9.2 kiloparsecs per EeV of energy—before decaying, which confines the search for possible sources within the Milky Way. In this study, carried out with 18 years of the Pierre Auger Observatory data, we analyze datasets nearly three times larger than those used in previous analyses. We extended the search to declinations up to +45° and we included a lower energy dataset with a threshold energy of 0.1 EeV. This extensive, high-quality dataset is studied in correlation with catalogs of over 800 Galactic candidate objects, including the Crab Nebula, which is studied for the first time in this type of analysis. The analysis method we present has been specifically developed for this study, allowing us also to establish upper limits on the neutron flux from the candidate sources under investigation.
