Related papers: Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays: Origin, Composition…
The existence of cosmic ray particles up to the ultra-high energy limit (> 10^20 eV) is now beyond any doubt. The detection of cosmic particles with such energies imposes a challenge for the comprehension of their sources and nature. On one…
In this lecture I give an overview of shock acceleration, interactions of high energy cosmic rays with, and propagation through, the background radiation, and the resulting electron-photon cascade. I argue that while the origin of the…
The most energetic particles ever detected exceed $10^{20}$ eV in energy. Their existence represents at the same time a great challenge for particle physics and astrophysics, and a great promise of providing us for a probe of the validity…
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…
Regarding ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) as a probe and extra dimensions as a possible ingredient of the fantastic ultrahigh-energy world, we discuss possible interplay between them. On the one hand small extra dimensions and…
The origin of the highest energy cosmic rays represents one of the most conspicuous enigmas of modern astrophysics, in spite of gigantic experimental efforts in the past fifty years, and of active theoretical research. The past decade has…
We review the basic ideas on the origin of cosmic rays with energy in excess of $\sim 10^{19}$ eV, in the light of the most recent observational findings. The limited statistics of events detected by the two largest experiments currently…
The construction of large volume detectors of high energy, >1 TeV, neutrinos is mainly driven by the search for extra-Galactic neutrino sources. The existence of such sources is implied by observations of ultra-high energy, >10^{19} eV,…
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are sources of energetic, highly variable fluxes of gamma rays, which demonstrates that they are powerful particle accelerators. Besides relativistic electrons, GRBs should also accelerate high-energy hadrons, some…
From the analysis of AGASA data above $4 \times 10^{19}$ eV, we show that the ultra-high energy cosmic rays flux is neither purely isotropic, nor reflects the expected anisotropy from a pure source distribution that maps large scale…
Cosmic rays reaching the atmosphere of an astrophysical object produce showers of secondary particles that may then escape into space. Here we obtain the flux of gamma rays and neutrinos of energy $E>10$ GeV emitted by the Sun, Jupiter and…
We summarize recent results of the observations of high (1 TeV-100 PeV) and ultrahigh ($\geq 100$ PeV) energy neutrinos, including the detection of a diffuse cosmic high-energy neutrino background, the identification of the first neutrino…
We will review the production of neutrinos with PeV energies and above. Discussing two possible sources of this radiation: the propagation of ultra high energy cosmic rays and the decay of super heavy dark matter. The discussion will focus…
Most cosmic ray particles observed derive from the explosions of massive stars, which commonly produce stellar black holes in their supernova explosions. When two such black holes find themselves in a tight binary system they finally merge…
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…
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 surprising lack of a high energy cutoff in the cosmic ray spectrum at the highest energies together with an apparently isotropic distribution of arrival directions have strongly challenged most models proposed for the acceleration of…
We investigate the propagation of ultra-high energy cosmic ray nuclei (A = 1-56) from cosmologically distant sources through the cosmic radiation backgrounds. Various models for the injected composition and spectrum and of the cosmic…
Ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) are atomic nuclei from space with vastly higher energies than any other particles ever observed. Their origin and chemical composition remain a mystery. As we show here, the large- and…
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…