Related papers: Astronomy with ultra high-energy particles
The field of ultra-high energy cosmic rays made a lot of progresses last years with large area experiments such as the Pierre Auger Observatory, HiRes and the Telescope Array. A suppression of the cosmic ray flux at energies above…
High energy cosmic rays allow probing phenomena that are inacessible to accelerators. Observation of cosmic rays, presumebly protons, with energies beyond $4 \times 10^{19} eV$, the so-called Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin (GZK) cut-off, give…
We explore scenarios where the highest energy cosmic rays (HECR) are produced by new particle physics near the grand unification scale. Using detailed numerical simulations of extragalactic cosmic and gamma-ray propagation, we show the…
A review of several analyses is presented that forces the conclusion that the mass composition of the highest-energy cosmic rays is not proton-dominated. This deduction, combined with the use of a modern hadronic interaction model, should…
Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECRs) are charged particles of energies above $10^{18}$ eV that originate outside of the Galaxy. Because the flux of the UHECRs at Earth is very small, the only practical way of observing UHECRs is by…
We report a measurement of the flux of cosmic rays with unprecedented precision and statistics using the Pierre Auger Observatory. Based on fluorescence observations in coincidence with at least one surface detector we derive a spectrum for…
High-energy cosmic ray events present important challenges to particle astrophysics. Their nature and origin are often not well understood and, as they occur in an energy domain not accessible to particle accelerators, there is no clear…
The sources of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays are still unknown, but assuming standard physics, they are expected to lie within a few hundred megaparsecs from us. Indeed, over cosmological distances cosmic rays lose energy to interactions…
The energies of cosmic rays, fully ionized charged nuclei, extend over a wide range up to 10^20 eV. A particularly interesting energy region spans from 10^14 to 10^18 eV, where the all-particle energy spectrum exhibits two interesting…
The world largest exposure to ultra-high energy cosmic rays accumulated by the Pierre Auger Observatory led to major advances in our understanding of their properties, but the many unknowns about the nature and distribution of the sources,…
A thorough search of the sky exposed at the Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory reveals no statistically significant excess of events in any small solid angle that would be indicative of a flux of neutral particles from a discrete source.…
Many models for ultra-high energy cosmic rays postulate exotic scenarios to explain the sources or the nature of these particles. A characteristic feature of these models is the prediction of a significant flux of photons at ultra-high…
The physics of Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays will be reviewed, discussing the latest experimental results and theoretical models aiming at explaining the observations in terms of spectra, mass composition and possible sources. It will be…
The origin of the ultrahigh energy cosmic ray remains being a mystery. However, a considerable progress has been made in the past few years due to the good quality data recorded by current cosmic ray observatories. One of the recent…
Ultrahigh energy cosmic rays that produce giant extensive showers of charged particles and photons when they interact in the Earth's atmosphere provide a unique tool to search for new physics. Of particular interest is the possibility of…
The Pierre Auger Observatory is the largest astroparticle experiment in operation. Complementary to the measurements of the charged ultra-high energy (UHE) cosmic rays, it provides a very good sensitivity to the detection of UHE photons and…
Existing and planned observatories for cosmic neutrinos open up a huge window in energy from 10^7 to 10^17 GeV. Here, we discuss in particular the possibilities to use extremely energetic cosmic neutrinos as a diagnostic of astrophysical…
Interpretation of the energy spectrum and arrival distribution of cosmic rays is complicated by lack of knowledge of the nature of the primaries. We review claims for the mass composition above 1017 eV where it can be determined only…
In this proceeding we present the construction status and the performances of the Pierre Auger Observatory together with the first results obtained with our initial 18 month of data. In particular, we discuss our search for anisotropy near…
Observations of cosmic rays have been improving at all energies, with higher statistics and reduced systematics. Fundamental questions remain regarding the origins of cosmic rays both within the Galaxy and in extragalactic sources, and new…