Related papers: The cosmic $e^\pm$ anomaly
The gamma-ray background is still a subject under great debate. All phenomena in the universe emitting gamma-rays can contribute directly as diffuse emission or as an isotropic component from unresolved point sources. The question of the…
The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has revealed a diffuse $\gamma$-ray background at energies from 0.1 GeV to 1 TeV, which can be separated into Galactic emission and an isotropic, extragalactic component. Previous efforts to understand…
In this paper we review the hypothesis that a considerable part of the cosmic ray flux observed above about $10^{19}\eV$ may be produced by decaying or annihilating topological defects left over from phase transitions in the early universe…
The impressive power-law decay of the energy spectrum of cosmic rays over more than thirty orders of magnitude in intensity and for energies ranging over eleven decades between $\simeq 10^9 $eV and $\simeq 10^{20} $eV is actually dotted…
Clustering of cosmic-ray sources affects the flux observed beyond the cutoff imposed by the cosmic microwave background and may be important in interpreting the AGASA, Fly's Eye, and HiRes data. The standard deviation, sigma, in the…
The ARCADE 2 collaboration has reported a significant excess in the isotropic radio background, whose homogeneity cannot be reconciled with clustered sources. This suggests a cosmological origin prior to structure formation. We investigate…
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…
Cosmic rays accelerated to ultra-high energies (E>4x10^19 eV) in electric fields in accretion discs around supermassive black holes are discussed. Particle injection spectra are assumed to be harder than those formed in acceleration on…
Recent observations of galactic cosmic rays (CR) in the 1-500 GeV energy range have revealed striking deviations from what deemed "standard." The anomalies cut across hadronic and leptonic CRs. I discuss findings that challenge physical…
A combined interpretation of the CALET $e^+\, +\, e^-$ spectrum up to 3 TeV and the AMS-02 positron spectrum up to 500 GeV was performed and the results are discussed. To parametrize the background electron flux, we assume a smoothly broken…
A shock-accelerated particle flux \propto p^-s, where p is the particle momentum, follows from simple theoretical considerations of cosmic-ray acceleration at nonrelativistic shocks followed by rigidity-dependent escape into the Galactic…
Fermi measurements of the high-latitude gamma-ray background strongly constrain a decaying-dark-matter origin for the 1--100 GeV Galactic positron anomaly measured with PAMELA. Inverse-Compton scattering of the microwave background by the…
High-energy gamma-ray emission from the Galactic plane above ~100 MeV is composed of three main contributions: diffuse emission from cosmic ray interactions in the interstellar medium, emission from extended sources, such as supernova…
Cumulative optical and infrared emission from galaxies accumulated over cosmological time scales, the extragalactic background light (EBL), could be probed by complementary techniques of direct observations and source counting in the…
The PAMELA and ATIC collaborations have recently reported an excess in the cosmic ray positron and electron fluxes. These lepton anomalies might be related to cold dark matter (CDM) particles annihilating within a nearby dark matter clump.…
Despite the influx of unprecedented-quality data from the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope that have been collected over nine years of operation, the contribution of normal star-forming galaxies to the extragalactic gamma-ray background…
The Fermi-LAT telescope has measured the extragalactic gamma-ray background (EGB) generated by the ensemble of all extragalactic sources. The energy distribution of the EGB is well described as a power-law with a spectral index…
We investigate the extent to which the uncertainties associated with the propagation of Galactic cosmic rays impact upon estimates for the gamma-ray flux from the mid-latitude region. We consider contributions from both standard…
We report the results of a recent (July 2004) XMM-Newton Target of Opportunity observation of the Anomalous X-ray pulsar 1E 1048.1-5937, together with a detailed re-analysis of previous observations carried out in 2000 and 2003. In July…
The understanding of the particle spectra resulting from acceleration in relativistic shocks as they occur in extragalactic sources, is essential for the interpretation of the cosmic ray spectrum above the ankle ($E_p>3\cdot 10^{18}$ eV).…