Speaker
Description
Identifying the origins of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays continues to be a primary objective in high-energy astrophysics. While anisotropies in their arrival directions offer a primary pathway to source identification, the intervening Galactic and intergalactic magnetic fields induce significant deflections that mask their true points of origin. In this study, we backpropagate a dataset of 40 events with energies above 100 EeV recorded by the Pierre Auger Observatory through the latest Galactic magnetic field models to reconstruct their initial sky positions. Furthermore, by accounting for maximum propagation distances, we establish a framework for a three-dimensional localization of candidate sources. Our analysis rigorously incorporates uncertainties in both energy and arrival direction, and the mass composition of the events is estimated from simulations. We evaluate potential correlations between the reconstructed regions and various catalogs of astrophysical objects for both individual events and using a statistical approach. Our results place novel constraints on the production sites of the highest energy cosmic particles and provide new perspectives on how magnetic fields modify the observed ultra-high-energy cosmic-ray sky.