13–16 May 2009
Roma
Europe/Rome timezone

Astrophysical interpretation of Pierre Auger Observatory measurements of the UHECR energy spectrum and mass composition

14 May 2009, 15:30
30m
Sala Vanvitelli (Roma)

Sala Vanvitelli

Roma

CR

Speaker

Armando Di Matteo (AQ)

Description

We present a combined fit of a simple astrophysical model of UHECR sources to both the energy spectrum and mass composition data measured by the Pierre Auger Observatory. The fit has been performed for energies above 5 EeV, i.e. the region of the all-particle spectrum above the so-called "ankle" feature. The astrophysical model we adopted consists of identical sources uniformly distributed in a comoving volume, where nuclei are accelerated with a rigidity-dependent mechanism. The fit results suggest sources characterized by relatively low maximum injection energies and hard spectral indices. The impact of various systematic uncertainties on the above result is discussed.

Presentation materials