Related papers: On the origin of galactic cosmic rays
The origin of Galactic cosmic rays remains a matter of debate, but supernova remnants are commonly considered to be the main place where high-energy cosmic rays are accelerated. Nevertheless, current models predict cosmic-ray spectra that…
Physicists have pondered the origin of cosmic rays for over a hundred years. However the last few years have seen an upsurge in the observation, progress in the theory and a genuine increase in the importance attached to the topic due to…
The nearby radio galaxy Centaurus A belongs to a class of Active Galaxies that are very luminous at radio wavelengths. The majority of these galaxies show collimated relativistic outflows known as jets, that extend over hundreds of…
We consider effects on an (ultra-) relativistic jet and its ambient medium caused by high energy cosmic rays accelerated at the jet side boundary. As illustrated by simple models, during the acceleration process a flat cosmic ray…
Most of the electromagnetic output of blazars (BL Lac objects and Flat Spectrum Radio Quasars) comes out in the gamma-ray band, making the Large Area Telescope [0.1-100 GeV] onboard the Fermi satellite and the Cherenkov telescopes crucial…
We present the theoretical arguments and describe the accumulating experimental evidence that jets, powered by supermassive black holes, are true cosmic accelerators. They produce photons of TeV energy, possible higher, and may be the…
It is presumed that the observed cosmic rays up to about $3\times 10^{18}$ eV are of Galactic origin, the particles being the ones which are found in the composition of the stellar winds of stars that explode as supernova into the…
We review recent progress in our understanding of the physics of energetic particles in our Galaxy, in active galaxies such as starburst galaxies, in active galactic nuclei and in the jets and radio hot spots of powerful radio galaxies and…
It is argued that there are three `origins' of cosmic rays; the origin of the particles, the origin of the energy, and the site of the acceleration. The evidence for each origin is discussed and a plausible synthesis outlined for the…
One of the most exciting discoveries of recent years is a pair of gigantic gamma-ray emission regions, the so-called Fermi bubbles, above and below the Galactic center. The bubbles, discovered by the Fermi space telescope, extend up to…
The little we do know of the physical conditions in gamma-ray bursters makes them conducive to the acceleration of high-energy cosmic rays, especially if they are at cosmological distances. We find that, with the observed statistics and…
(Abridged) We interpret gamma ray bursts as relativistic, electromagnetic explosions. Specifically, we propose that they are created when a rotating, relativistic, stellar-mass progenitor loses much of its rotational energy in the form of a…
X-ray emission from large scale extragalactic jets is likely to be due to inverse Compton scattering of relativistic particles off seed photons of both the cosmic microwave background field and the blazar nucleus. The first process…
It is shown that the relativistic jets associated with the growth and past activity of the supermassive black hole in the Andromeda galaxy could be the main source of cosmic rays with energies above $10^{15}$ eV. Most of the cosmic ray…
From the analysis of the flux of high energy particles, $E>3\cdot 10^{18}eV$, it is shown that the distribution of the power density of extragalactic rays over energy is of the power law, ${\bar q}(E)\propto E^{-2.7}$, with the same index…
The mechanism accelerating cosmic rays in the Milky Way Galaxy and galaxy clusters is identified and described. The acceleration of cosmic rays is a purely electrostatic process which operates up to the maximum energies of $10^{23}$ eV in…
I review recent progress in the theory of relativistic jet production. The presently favored mechanism is an electrodynamic one, in which charged plasma is accelerated by electric fields that are generated by a rotating magnetic field. The…
An overview is given on the present status of the understanding of the origin of galactic cosmic rays. Recent measurements of charged cosmic rays and photons are reviewed. Their impact on the contemporary knowledge about the sources and…
Recent data from ATIC, CREAM and PAMELA indicate that the cosmic ray energy spectra of protons and nuclei exhibit a remarkable hardening at energies above 100 GeV per nucleon. We propose that the hardening is an interstellar propagation…
We present our view of the immediate environment of an astrophysical black hole. We discuss the origin of the electron-positron and electron-proton jet components, and the origin of the large-scale magnetic field. We show how the aberrated…