Search

Carpet-2 is an air-shower array at Baksan Valley, Russia, equipped with a large-area (175 m^2) muon detector, which makes it possible to separate primary photons from hadrons. We report the first results of the search for primary photons with energies E_\gamma>1 PeV, directionally associated with IceCube high-energy neutrino events, in the data obtained in 3080 days of Carpet-2 live time., Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures. V2: minor copy-editing changes. Accepted by JETP Letters

Cosmic gamma-ray bursts from evaporating primordial black holes for the evaporation model with relativistic phase transitions have been sought in the data from the Andyrchy extensive air shower (EAS) array. This model predicts ultrashort (≃10−13 s) gamma-ray bursts with the spectrum with the maximum intensities simultaneously at the photon energies of 100 MeV and 100 GeV. Such ultrashort gamma-ray bursts can be detected by EAS arrays located on mountains as EASs with a uniform lateral distribution. A limit on the concentration of evaporating primordial black holes in a local region of the Galaxy for this evaporation model has been obtained from information accumulated during a live time of 4.23 yr.

A method for the detection of hadrons with a muon detector at the Carpet-2 EAS array (Baksan Neutrino Observatory, Institute for Nuclear Research, Russian Academy of Sciences) has been described. Events induced by cosmic-ray hadrons have a signature that makes it possible to reliably distinguish them from muons. The characteristics of the hadronic component of extensive air showers with Ne ≥ 105 have been presented.

Cosmic gamma-ray bursts with primary-photon energies ≥ 10 GeV are sought in the data from the Andyrchy array obtained in the mode of detection of a single cosmic-ray component during a net observation period of 2005.4 d. The distribution of fluctuations of the detector count rate agrees with the expected cosmic-ray background, the only exception being an event with a deviation of 7.9σ. Constraints on the number density of evaporating primordial black holes in a local region of the Galaxy are obtained for the chromospheric evaporation models.