Effects of uncertainties in simulations of extragalactic UHECR propagation, using CRPropa and SimProp

R. Alves Batista, D. Boncioli, A. Di Matteo, A. Van Vliet, D. Walz

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

47 Scopus citations

Abstract

The results of simulations of extragalactic propagation of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) have intrinsic uncertainties due to poorly known physical quantities and approximations used in the codes. We quantify the uncertainties in the simulated UHECR spectrum and composition due to different models of extragalactic background light (EBL), different photodisintegration setups, approximations concerning photopion production and the use of different simulation codes. We discuss the results for several representative source scenarios with proton, nitrogen or iron at injection. For this purpose we used SimProp and CRPropa, two publicly available codes for Monte Carlo simulations of UHECR propagation. CRPropa is a detailed and extensive simulation code, while SimProp aims to achieve acceptable results using a simpler code. We show that especially the choices for the EBL model and the photodisintegration setup can have a considerable impact on the simulated UHECR spectrum and composition.

Original languageBritish English
Article number063
JournalJournal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Volume2015
Issue number10
DOIs
StatePublished - 28 Oct 2015

Keywords

  • cosmic ray theory
  • ultra high energy cosmic rays

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