Images of Bursting Sources of High-Energy Cosmic Rays. I: Effects of Magnetic Fields

Abstract

It has recently been shown that the highest energy cosmic rays (CRs) may originate in the same cosmological objects producing \(\gamma\)-ray bursts. This model requires the presence of intergalactic magnetic fields (IGMF) to delay the arrival times of \(\sim 10^{20}\) eV CRs by 50 years or longer relative to the \(\gamma\)-rays, of an amplitude that is consistent with other observational constraints. Sources of CRs coming from individual bursts should be resolved with the planned ``Auger'' experiment, with as many as hundreds of CRs for the brightest sources. We analyze here the apparent angular and energy distribution of CRs from bright sources below the pion production threshold (in the energy range \(10^{19}{\rm eV} < E < 4\times10^{19}{\rm eV}\)) expected in this model. This observable distribution depends on the structure of the IGMF: the apparent spectral width \(\Delta E\) is small, \(\Delta E/E\lesssim1\%\), if the intergalactic field correlation length \(\lambda\) is much larger than \(1{\rm Mpc}\), and large, \(\Delta E/E=0.3\), in the opposite limit \(\lambda\ll 1{\rm Mpc}\). The apparent angular size is also larger for smaller \(\lambda\). If the sources of CRs we predict are found, they will corroborate the bursting model and they will provide us with a technique to investigate the structure of the IGMF.