Anisotropy of successive air showers

We have investigated the anisotropy of successive air shower (SAS) events, which we define as the detection of many air showers within a short time window, using data from six stations of the Large Area Air Shower (LAAS) group. On the criterion of 22 air showers within 20 minutes, five SAS events are found against 1.4 expected from the Poisson distribution in Okayama University station's data. From six stations' data, we find 24 SAS events in total. By plotting them in equatorial coordinates, it is revealed that SAS events are observed more frequently when the Galactic plane is around the zenith. This can be attributed to a hypothetical small flux of ultra-high-energy γ-rays from the direction of the Galactic plane superposed on conventional cosmic rays. If this hypothesis is true, the analytical procedure used here has potential to measure ultra-high-energy γ-ray sources by even small air shower arrays like ours.