Related papers: Cosmic Mass Spectrometer
We investigate the dependence of composition, spectrum and angular distributions of ultra-high energy cosmic rays above 10^19 eV from individual sources on their magnetization. We find that, especially for sources within a few megaparsecs…
We use a kinetic-equation approach to describe the propagation of ultra high energy cosmic ray protons and nuclei and calculate the expected spectra and mass composition at the Earth for different assumptions on the source injection spectra…
In this article we examine the hypothesis that the highest energy cosmic rays are complex nuclei from extragalactic sources. Under reasonable physical assumptions, we show that the nearby metally rich starburst galaxies (M82 and NGC 253)…
We provide our estimates of the intensity of the gamma-ray emission with an energy near 0.1 TeV generated in inrergalactic space in the interactions of cosmic rays with background emissions. We assume that the cosmic ray sources are…
We discuss the possibility that a dominant fraction of the cosmic rays above the ankle is due to a single nearby source, considering in particular the radio galaxy Centaurus A. We focus on the properties of the source spectrum and…
A very recent observation by the Auger Observatory group claims strong evidence for cosmic rays above 56 EeV being protons from Active Galactic Nuclei. If, as would be expected, the particles above the ankle at about 2 EeV are almost all of…
Analytical calculations of extra-galactic cosmic ray spectra above ~10^17 eV are often performed assuming continuous source distributions, giving rise to spectra that depend little on the propagation mode, be it rectilinear or diffusive. We…
Possible extragalactic sources of cosmic rays at energies above 4*10^{19} eV detected with the Yakutsk array are sought. Correlation of the shower arrival directions with objects from Veron's catalog that are located closer than 100 Mpc…
The sharp change in slope of the ultrahigh-energy cosmic ray spectrum around 10^{9.6} GeV (the ankle), combined with evidence of a light but extragalactic component near and below the ankle which evolves to intermediate/heavy composition…
Observations of TeV--PeV-energy cosmic neutrinos by the IceCube observatory have suggested that extragalactic cosmic-ray sources should have an optical depth greater than $\sim$0.01 and contribute to more than 10\% of the observed bulk of…
Data of Pierre Auger Observatory show a proton-dominated chemical composition of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays spectrum at (1 - 3) EeV and a steadily heavier composition with energy increasing. In order to explain this feature we assume that…
Understanding the acceleration of Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays is one of the great challenges of contemporary astrophysics. In this short review, we summarize the general observational constraints on their composition, spectrum and…
The origin of highest energy cosmic rays (UHECR) is yet unknown. In order to understand their propagation we determine the probability that an ultrahigh energy (above 5\cdot 10^{19} eV) proton created at a distance r with energy E arrives…
We study the propagation of ultra-high energy cosmic ray nuclei through the background of cosmic microwave and intergalactic infrared photons, using recent re-estimates for the density of the last ones. We perform a detailed Monte Carlo…
We present a novel approach to search for origins of ultra-high energy cosmic rays. These particles are likely nuclei that initiate extensive air showers in the Earth's atmosphere. In large-area observatories, the particle arrival…
We determine the probability that an ultrahigh energy (above 5\cdot 10^{19} eV) proton created at a distance r with energy E arrives at earth above a threshold E_c. The clustering of ultrahigh energy cosmic rays suggests that they might be…
The ultra-high energy cosmic rays observed at the Earth are most likely accelerated in extra-galactic sources. For the typical luminosities invoked for such sources, the electric current associated to the flux of cosmic rays that leave them…
It is crucial to identify the ultrahigh-energy cosmic-ray (UHECR) sources and probe their unknown properties. Recent results from the Pierre Auger Observatory favor a heavy nuclear composition for the UHECRs. Under the requirement that…
Cosmic rays with energies beyond the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin `cutoff' at $\sim 4 \times 10^{10}$ GeV pose a conundrum, the solution of which requires either drastic revision of our astrophysical understanding, or new physics beyond the…
The energy losses and spectra of Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECR) are calculated for protons as primary particles. The attention is given to the energy losses due to electron-positron production in collisions with the microwave 2.73 K…