Measurement of the anisotropy of cosmic-ray arrival directions with IceCube

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2010

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Abbasi, R.
Hill, G.

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Letters of the Astrophysical Journal, 2010; 718(2):194-198

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R. Abbasi ... G. C. Hill ... et al. (IceCube Collaboration)

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Abstract

We report the first observation of an anisotropy in the arrival direction of cosmic rays with energies in the multi-TeV region in theSouthern sky using data from the IceCube detector. Between 2007 June and 2008 March, the partially deployed IceCube detector was operated in a configuration with 1320 digital optical sensors distributed over22 strings at depths between 1450 and 2450 m inside the Antarctic ice. IceCube is a neutrino detector, but the data are dominated by a large background of cosmic-ray muons. Therefore, the background data aresuitable for high-statistics studies of cosmic rays in the southern sky. The data include 4.3 billion muons produced by downward-going cosmic-ray interactions in the atmosphere; these events were reconstructed with a median angular resolution of 3° and a median energy of ∼20 TeV. Their arrival direction distribution exhibits an anisotropy in right ascension with a first-harmonic amplitude of (6.4±0.2 stat.±0.8 syst.) × 10<sup>-4</sup>. © 2010 The American Astronomical Society.

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© 2010 The American Astronomical Society.

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