Ultra-high energy cosmic ray sources and large scale magnetic fields

Abstract

Protons of energies up to 10**20 eV can be subject to significant deflection and energy dependent time delay in lage scale extragalactic or halo magnetic fields of strengths comparable to current upper limits. By performing 3-dimensional Monte Carlo simulations of nucleon propagation, we show how observations of arrival direction and time distributions can be used to measure the structure and strength of large-scale magnetic fields, and constrain the nature of the source of ultra-high energy cosmic rays.