Arrival directions of the highest-energy cosmic rays detected with the Pierre Auger Observatory

International audienceWe present the results of a search for small to intermediate scale anisotropies in the distribution of arrival directions of ultra-high energy cosmic rays recorded at the Pierre Auger Observatory. The data set, gathered in ten years of operation, includes arrival directions with zenith angles up to 80, and is about three times larger than that used in earlier studies. We update the test based on correlations with active galactic nuclei (AGNs) from the Véron-Cetty and Véron catalog, which does not yield a significant indication of anisotropy with the present data set. We perform a blind search for localized excess fluxes and for self-clustering of arrival directions at angular scales up to 30 and for different energy thresholds between 40 EeV and 80 EeV. We also examine the correlation of arrival directions with relatively nearby galaxies in the 2MRS catalog, AGNs detected by Swift-BAT,and a sample of radio galaxies with jets and with the Centaurus A galaxy. None of the searches shows a statistically significant evidence of anisotropy. The two largest departures from isotropy that were found have a post-trial probability = 1:4%. One is for cosmic rays with energy above 58 EeV that arrive within 15° of the direction toward Centaurus A. The other is for arrival directions within 18° of Swift-BAT AGNs closer than 130 Mpc and brighter than 10$^{44}$ erg/s, with the same energy threshold