a Department of Physics, IIT, Kanpur 208016, India
b Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045, USA
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 1020 eV to a compilation of radio-loud compact QSO positions. The statistical method emphasizes invariant quantities and a test of statistical independence of track and source distributions. Statistical independence is ruled out by several independent statistics at confidence levels of orders 97–99%, indicating that track directions and QSO source positions are correlated at a significant level.