Correlation of Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays with Compact Radio Loud Quasars

Abstract

Angular correlations of ultra-high energy cosmic rays with cosmologically distant sources may provide clues to these mysterious events. We compare cosmic ray tracks with energies above $10^{20}eV$ to a compilation of radio-loud compact QSO positions. The statistical method emphasizes invariant quantities and a test of {\it statistical independence} of track and source distributions. Statistical independence is ruled out by several independent statistics at confidence levels of less that $10^{-3}$ ($99.9$.), indicating that track directions and QSO source positions are correlated at a highly significant level.

Comments: 12 pages, 2 figures