Related papers: Astroparticle Physics: Puzzles and Discoveries
In these three lectures I discuss the present status of high-energy astroparticle physics including Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECR), high-energy gamma rays, and neutrinos. The first lecture is devoted to ultra-high-energy cosmic rays.…
We consider the phenomenology of cosmic-rays (CRs) and stress the interest of jointly studying their properties over the whole energy spectrum. While UHECRs are known to raise important physical and astrophysical problems, we recall that…
The origin of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) and neutrinos is still a mystery. Hadronic acceleration theory suggests that they should originate in the same sources (astrophysical or cosmological), together with gamma-rays. While…
A prediction of standard Big Bang cosmology is that the observed UHECR (ultra-high-energy cosmic rays) spectrum will exhibit a cutoff at the GKZ limit, resulting from interaction with the photons that constitute the cosmic microwave…
The discovery of cosmic acceleration has presented a unique challenge for cosmologists. As observational cosmology forges ahead, theorists have struggled to make sense of a standard model that requires extreme fine tuning. This challenge is…
The detection of High Energy Cosmic Rays (HECR) with energies around and beyond GZK expected cutoff has introduced the idea of existence of a decaying Ultra Heavy Dark Matter (UHDM). If this type of particles make a substantial part of the…
The origin of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) is a half-century old enigma (Linsley 1963). The mystery has been deepened by an intriguing coincidence: over ten orders of magnitude in energy, the energy generation rates of UHECRs, PeV…
One of the most enduring and unresolved challenges in modern theoretical and observational cosmology is the fine-tuning and coincidence problems associated with the cosmological constant. Rather than attempting to reconcile these issues…
Owing to their isotropy, it is generally believed that ultrahigh energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) are extragalactic in origin. It is then expected that interactions of these cosmic rays with photons of the cosmic background radiation (CBR)…
Very recently, it was pointed out that when basic ideas of the Swampland program are combined with the cosmological hierarchy problem (i.e. the smallness of the dark energy in Planck units) and together are confronted to experiment lead to…
The year 2007 has furnished us with outstanding results about the origin of the most energetic cosmic rays: a flux suppression as expected from the GZK-effect has been observed in the data of the HiRes and Auger experiments and correlations…
Since more than a century we investigate cosmic particles coming from the Universe with the aim of understanding their nature, their origin and how they are accelerated. So far, cosmic rays have provided many impressive results, giving…
The study of high energy cosmic rays is a diversified field of observational and phenomenological physics addressing questions ranging from shock acceleration of charged particles in various astrophysical objects, via transport properties…
The origin and composition of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) remain a mystery. The proton dip model describes their spectral shape in the energy range above $10^9$ GeV by pair production and photohadronic interactions with the…
We point out that the presence of energetic cosmic rays above the GZK cutoff may be explained by fundamental non-linearities in quantum mechanics at the Plank level.
Observations of cosmic rays have been improved at all energies, both in terms of higher statistics and reduced systematics. As a result, the all particle cosmic ray energy spectrum starts to exhibit more structures than could be seen…
The origin of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) is one of the most intriguing problems of modern cosmic ray physics. We briefly review the main astrophysical models of their origin and the forthcoming orbital experiments TUS and…
Ultra high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) are expected to be accelerated in astrophysical sources and to travel through extragalactic space before hitting the Earth atmosphere. They interact both with the environment in the source and with the…
The neutron fraction in the very high energy cosmic rays near the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin (GZK) cutoff energy is analyzed by taking into account the time dilation effect of the neutron decays and also the pion photoproduction behaviors…
The topological defect scenario of origin of the observed highest energy cosmic rays is reviewed. Under a variety of circumstances, topological defects formed in the early Universe can be sources of very massive particles in the Universe…