RECONSTRUCTION OF SOURCE AND COSMIC MAGNETIC-FIELD CHARACTERISTICS FROM CLUSTERS OF ULTRA-HIGH ENERGY COSMIC-RAYS

We present a detailed Monte Carlo study coupled to a likelihood analys is of the potential of next generation ultrahigh energy cosmic ray exp eriments to reconstruct properties of the sources and the extra-galact ic magnetic field. Such characteristics are encoded in the distributio ns of arrival time, direction, and energy of clusters of charged cosmi c rays above a few 10(19) eV. The parameters we consider for reconstru ction are the emission timescale, total fluence (or power), injection spectrum, and distance to the source, as well as the r.m.s. field stre ngth, power spectrum, and coherence length of the magnetic field. We d iscuss five generic situations which can be identified relatively easi ly and allow a reasonable reconstruction of at least part of these par ameters. Our numerical code is set up such that it can easily be appli ed to the data from future experiments. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.