# Comment on “Correlation between Compact Radio Quasars and Ultrahigh Energy Cosmic Rays”

In the paper “Correlation between Compact Radio Quasars and Ultrahigh Energy Cosmic Rays,”  Farrar and Biermann argue that there is a strong correlation between the direction of the five highest-energy cosmic-ray events and compact, radio-loud quasars. Because this result, if true, would have profound implications, it has been widely reported in the popular scientific press . This Comment shows that the analysis in Ref.  contains several inconsistencies and errors so that the significance of any such correlation is certainly greatly overestimated and perhaps nonexistent.

A proton, nucleus or photon above 10<sup>20</sup> eV is exceedingly unlikely to travel further than 50 Mpc due to interactions with the cosmic microwave background: this is the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin limit . The compact, radio-loud quasars (CQSOs) in question have red shifts ranging from $`0.29<z<2.18`$. Thus new physics is required if the observed high-energy cosmic rays did originate in CQSOs. The authors suggest two possibilities:

1. The existence of a new neutral long-lived hadron with a mass of a few GeV, such as a light gluino , and
2. Neutrinos with a mass of a few eV interacting resonantly with dark-matter neutrinos clustered in the halo of either our galaxy or the local cluster of galaxies producing a $`Z`$-boson. This results in an ultrahigh-energy hadron or photon that, in turn, produces the observed extensive air shower .

In both of these scenarios, the high-energy cosmic ray should point back to its source. It is this hypothesis that is tested in Ref. , with the conclusion that the five high-energy cosmic-ray events examined are all aligned with CQSOs, and that the probability that these alignments are coincidental is 0.005.

The authors chose to examine all high-energy cosmic-ray events whose energy is at least 1$`\sigma `$ above $`8\times 10^{19}`$ eV and whose direction is known with a solid angle resolution, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }`$, of 10 deg<sup>2</sup> or better. While only qualitative reasons are given for these specific criteria, it is striking that the energy cut barely excludes two events from Haverah Park with energies of $`(1.02\pm 0.3)\times 10^{20}`$ eV and $`(1.05\pm 0.3)\times 10^{20}`$ eV, and one from Yakutsk with an energy of $`(1.1\pm 0.4)\times 10^{20}`$ eV . Remarkably, one of the events used in the analysis of Ref.  also fails the cut: this is the event labeled Ag110, which has a measured energy of $`(1.10\times 10^{20})`$ eV $`\pm `$ 30%.

It is unclear what Farrar and Biermann mean by “solid angle resolution.” In Table I of Ref. , the $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }`$s given for two events (Ag210 and Ag110) contain the true event directions with 68% probability, while the $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }`$s given for the other three events (FE320, HP120, HP105) contain the true event direction with only $`12`$% probability. In addition, the values of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }`$ in Table I of Ref.  for FE320 and HP120 are incorrectly calculated.

These discrepancies call into question whether the events used in further analysis have been selected in an fair, unbiased manner, and whether the subsequent analysis, in which the probability that randomly distributed objects with a given surface density would appear aligned with the five events is calculated, is correct.

Even if the analysis of Ref.  is correct, the statistical significance given for the alignment (0.005) is not. The authors formulate the hypothesis of correlations between the cosmic-ray directions and CQSOs (as opposed to other possible astrophysical objects) because a correlation with a CQSO had already been noted for the 320 TeV Fly’s Eye event (FE320) . An event used to formulate a hypothesis may not be used to test that hypothesis. Eliminating FE320 from the analysis lowers the statistical significance of the alignment to 0.03. It is this number, not 0.005, that correctly assesses the evidence for the hypothesis that the high-energy cosmic-ray events point back to compact quasars, assuming that the selection criteria are unbiased and that the rest of the analysis in Ref.  has been done correctly.

I gratefully acknowledge illuminating conversations with C. Sinnis. This work was partially supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the University of California.