Related papers: Cosmic rays from thermal sources
The sky distribution of cosmic rays with energies above the 'GZK cutoff' holds important clues to their origin. The AGASA data, although consistent with isotropy, shows evidence for small-angle clustering, and it has been argued that such…
This review focuses on high-energy cosmic rays in the PeV energy range and above. Of particular interest is the knee of the spectrum around 3 PeV and the transition from cosmic rays of Galactic origin to particles from extra-galactic…
Observations of cosmic rays with energies above ~ 4 x 10^{10} GeV have inspired several speculative suggestions concerning their origin. The crucial question is whether or not the spectrum exhibits the expected `GZK cutoff' at this energy…
A critical review of the standard paradigm for the origin of Galactic cosmic rays is presented. Recent measurements of local and far-away cosmic rays reveal unexpected behaviours, which challenge the commonly accepted scenario. These recent…
The Earth is continuously showered by charged cosmic ray particles, naturally produced atomic nuclei moving with velocity close to the speed of light. Among these are ultra high energy cosmic ray particles with energy exceeding 5x10^19 eV,…
Supernova remnants (SNRs) have long been suspected to be the primary sources of Galactic cosmic rays. Over the past decades, great strides have been made in the modelling of particle acceleration, magnetic field amplification, and escape…
The origin of Galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) remains a mystery after more than one century of their discovery. The diffusive propagation of charged particles in the turbulent Galactic magnetic field makes us unable to trace back to their…
We introduce a static toy model of the cosmic ray (CR) universe in which cosmic ray propagation is taken to be diffusive and cosmic ray sources are distributed randomly with a density the same as that of local L* galaxies, $5 \times…
After a century of observations, we still do not know the origin of cosmic rays. I will review the current state of cosmic ray observations at the highest energies, and their implications for proposed acceleration models and secondary…
Cosmic rays are relativistic particles that come to the Earth from outer space. Despite a great effort made in both experimental and theoretical research, their origin is still unknown. One of the main keys to understand their nature is the…
We constrain the energy at which the transition from Galactic to extragalactic cosmic rays occurs by computing the anisotropy at Earth of cosmic rays emitted by Galactic sources. Since the diffusion approximation starts to loose its…
The cosmic ray energy distributions contain spectral features, that is narrow energy regions where the slope of the spectrum changes rapidly. The identification and study of these features is of great importance to understand the…
We propose that cosmic rays originate mainly in three sites, a) normal supernova explosions into the interstellar medium, b) supernova explosions into stellar winds, and c) hot spots of powerful radio galaxies. The proposal depends on an…
Motivated by the discovery of the non-thermal Fermi bubble features both below and above the Galactic plane, we investigate a scenario in which these bubbles are formed through Galacto-centric outflow. Cosmic rays (CR) both diffusing and…
We derive constraints that must be satisfied by the sources of ~10^{15} to ~10^{18} eV cosmic rays, under the assumption that the sources are Galactic. We show that while these constraints are not satisfied by ordinary supernovae (SNe),…
The sources of cosmic rays between the knee and the ankle are still debated. The Galactic wind and its termination shock have been proposed to contribute to this transition between Galactic and extragalactic origin, but another possibility…
Although several theories for the origin of cosmic rays in the region between the spectral `knee' and `ankle' exist, this problem is still unsolved. A variety of observations suggest that the transition from Galactic to extragalactic…
The origin of the highest-energy cosmic rays remains a mystery. The lack of a high energy cutoff in the cosmic ray spectrum together with an apparently isotropic distribution of arrival directions have strongly constrained most models…
Recent precise measurements of cosmic ray (CR) spectra show that the energy distribution of protons is softer than those of heavier nuclei, and there are spectral hardenings for all nuclear compositions above $\sim$200 GV. Models proposed…
The search for the origin of cosmic rays is as active as ever, mainly driven by new insights provided by recent pieces of observation. Much effort is being channelled in putting the so called supernova paradigm for the origin of galactic…