The nature of the highest energy cosmic rays
Astrophysics
2014-10-13 v1
Abstract
Ultra high energy gamma rays produce electron--positron pairs in interactions on the geomagnetic field. The pair electrons suffer magnetic bremsstrahlung and the energy of the primary gamma ray is shared by a bunch of lower energy secondaries. These processes reflect the structure of the geomagnetic field and cause experimentally observable effects. The study of these effects with future giant air shower arrays can identify the nature of the highest energy cosmic rays as either gamma-rays or nuclei.
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/9607011,
title = {The nature of the highest energy cosmic rays},
author = {Todor Stanev and H. P. Vankov},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/9607011},
year = {2014}
}
Comments
15 pages of RevTeX plus 6 postscript figures, tarred, gzipped and uuencoded. Subm. to Physical Review D