Related papers: Astroparticle Physics: Puzzles and Discoveries
We briefly discuss some open problems and recent developments in the investigation of the origin and propagation of ultra high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs).
The sources of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) are still one of the main open questions in high-energy astrophysics. If UHECRs are accelerated in astrophysical sources, they are expected to produce high-energy photons and neutrinos…
The origin of cosmic rays with energies higher than 10$^{20}$ eV remains a mystery. Accelerating particles up to these energies is a challenge even for the most energetic astrophysical objects known. While the isotropy in arrival directions…
We outline two concepts to explain Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECRs), one based on radio galaxies and their relativistic jets and terminal hot spots, and one based on relativistic Super-Novae (SNe) or Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) in…
The cosmic ray spectrum has been shown to extend well beyond 10^20 eV. With nearly 20 events observed in the last 40 years, it is now established that particles are accelerated or produced in the universe with energy near 10^21 eV. In all…
Ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) are particles, likely protons and/or nuclei, with energies up to $10^{20}$ eV that are observed through the giant air showers they produce in the atmosphere. These particles carry the information on…
Stable, quantized gravitational bound states of primordial black holes called Holeums could have been produced in the early universe and could be a component of the Super Heavy Dark Matter (SHDM) present in galactic halos. We show that…
One of the most striking astrophysical phenomena today is the existence of cosmic ray particles with energies in excess of 10^20 eV. While their presence has been confirmed by a number of experiments, it is not clear where and how these…
A number of observed phenomena in high energy physics and cosmology lack their resolution within the Standard Model of particle physics. These puzzles include neutrino oscillations, baryon asymmetry of the universe and existence of dark…
The origin of the highest energy cosmic rays is still unknown. The discovery of their sources will reveal the workings of the most energetic astrophysical accelerators in the universe. Current observations show a spectrum consistent with an…
Large-scale accretion shocks around massive clusters of galaxies, generically expected in hierarchical scenarios of cosmological structure formation, are shown to be potential sources of the observed ultrahigh energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) by…
We briefly discuss three aspects related to the origin of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) namely: 1) particle acceleration in astrophysical sources; 2) transition to an extragalactic origin; 3) spectrum and anisotropies at the…
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,…
One of the most tantalizing questions in astronomy and astrophysics, namely the origin and the evolution of the cosmic accelerators that produce the highest energy cosmic rays (UHECR), may be best addressed through the observation of ultra…
Universe structure emerges in the unreduced, complex-dynamical interaction process with the simplest initial configuration (two attracting homogeneous fields). The unreduced interaction analysis avoiding any perturbative model gives…
There are two processes of matter creation after inflation that may be relevant to the resolution of the puzzle of cosmic rays observed with energies beyond GZK cut-off: 1) gravitational creation of superheavy (quasi)stable particles, and…
The maximum distance bound for ultrahigh energy cosmic rays (UHECR) with energies above the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmich cutoff $\sim 10^{19} eV$ relaxes significantly if there is some mechanism that forces UHECR to propagate in discrete…
The cosmological constant problem represents an evident tension between our present description of gravity and particle physics. Many solutions have been proposed, but experimental tests are always difficult or impossible to perform and…
We show that a tiny but non-zero positive cosmological constant, which has been strongly suggested by the recent astronomical observations on supernovae and CMBR, may change notably the behaviors of the ultrahigh energy cosmic ray…
We investigate the possibility that cosmic rays of energy larger than the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin cutoff are not nucleons, but a new stable, massive, hadron that appears in many extensions of the standard model. We focus primarily on the…