Related papers: A Bayesian Approach to Comparing Cosmic Ray Energy…
A checklist of criteria is presented to help establish the sources of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs). These criteria are applied to long-duration GRBs in order to determine if they are UHECR sources. The evidence seems to favor…
Our knowledge of the mass composition of cosmic rays is deficient at all energies above 10^17. Here systematic differences between different measurements are discussed and, in particular, it is argued that there is no compelling evidence to…
We calculate the angular two-point correlation function of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECR) observed by AGASA and Yakutsk experiments. In both data sets, there is a strong signal at highest energies, which is concentrated in the first…
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…
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…
Determining if two histograms are consistent, whether they have been drawn from the same underlying distribution or not, is a common problem in physics. Existing approaches are not only limited in power but also inapplicable to histograms…
Cosmic ray astronomy attempts to identify and study the sources of ultrahigh energy cosmic rays. It is unique in its reliance on charged particles as the information carriers. While no discrete source of ultrahigh energy cosmic rays has…
We review the experimental evidences about flux and mass composition of ultra high energy cosmic rays in connection with theoretical scenarios concerning astrophysical sources. In this context, we also address the discussion about the…
We extend the Maximum Likelihood method used by HiRes to study cross correlations between a catalog of candidate astrophysical sources and Ultrahigh Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECRs), to allow for differing source luminosities. Our approach…
Some proposals to account for the highest energy cosmic rays predict that they should point to their sources. We study the five highest energy events (E>10^20 eV) and find they are all aligned with compact, radio-loud quasars. The…
The propagation of $\gamma$ rays over very large distances provides new insights on the intergalactic medium and on fundamental physics. On their path to the Earth, $\gamma$ rays can annihilate with diffuse infrared or optical photons of…
Ultra-high energy cosmic rays interacting with the radiation fields in the universe cause electromagnetic cascades resulting in a flux of extragalactic gamma rays, detectable to some 100 GeV. Recent precise measurements of the extragalactic…
Two separate statistical tests are applied to the AGASA and preliminary Auger Cosmic Ray Energy spectra in an attempt to find deviation from a pure power-law. The first test is constructed from the probability distribution for the maximum…
The clustering of ultra high energy (above 10^20 eV) cosmic rays (UHECR) suggests that they might be emitted by compact sources. Statistical analysis of Dubovsky et al. (Phys. Rev. Lett. 85 (2000) 1154) estimated the source density. We…
We present the results of a search for cosmic ray point sources at energies above 10^19 eV in the HiRes stereo data set. The analysis is based on a maximum likelihood ratio test using the probability density function for each event rather…
The measurement of large scale patterns or anisotropies in the arrival direction of high energy cosmic rays is an important step towards the understanding of their origin. Such measurements rely on an accurate estimation of the detector…
The problem of estimating non-resonant astrophysical S-factors and thermonuclear reaction rates, based on measured nuclear cross sections, is of major interest for nuclear energy generation, neutrino physics, and element synthesis. Many…
Direct techniques for cosmic ray observations have reached an unprecedented level of precision, unveiling fine-details of the energy spectra. I will introduce the evidence for new spectral features which has been accumulated by new…
Based on general considerations rather than model-dependent fits to specific scenarios, we argue that an increase with energy of the positron fraction in cosmic rays, suggested by several experiments at E>~7 GeV, most likely requires a…
Context: As more and more data are collected by cosmic ray experiments such as the Pierre Auger Observatory and Telescope Array (TA), the search for the sources of the Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECR) continues. Already we have some…