Cosmic rays from the galactic center

We examine the possibility that recent data on cosmic ray anisotropies presented by the AGASA group may lead to the conclusion that our Galactic Center is a major source of the highest energy cosmic rays in our galaxy. We discuss how such a source would contribute to the magnitude and directional properties of the observed flux when measured against a background of extragalactic cosmic rays. We do this using the results of previous propagation calculations and our own more recent calculations which are specifically for a Galactic Center source. We find that the AGASA data can indeed be plausibly interpreted in this way and also that an argument can be made that the Galactic Center has the appropriate physical properties for acceleration to energies of the order of 10(18) eV. We show that data from the SUGAR array are compatible with the AGASA result. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All lights reserved. PACS: 98.70.Sa.