Related papers: Detection of Cosmic Rays from ground: an Introduct…
We briefly review sources of cosmic rays, their composition and spectra as well as their propagation in the galactic and extragalactic magnetic fields, both regular and fluctuating. A special attention is paid to the recent results of the…
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…
Determining the spatial distribution of Galactic cosmic rays (CRs) is fundamental to understand how these particles propagate in interstellar space and to infer their source spectra. The most sensitive method of studying this problem is…
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…
The problem of the origin of Cosmic Rays is now over a century old and while there has been substantial progress, especially in the last decade, there are still open questions. The question of "origin" is open to at least three possible…
It is now widely acknowledged that cosmic rays experiments can test possible new physics directly generated at the Planck scale or at some other fundamental scale. By studying particle properties at energies far beyond the reach of any…
One century ago Viktor Hess carried out several balloon flights that led him to conclude that the penetrating radiation responsible for the discharge of electroscopes was of extraterrestrial origin. One century from the discovery of this…
Extreme Energy Cosmic Rays, EECRs -- cosmic rays with energies beyond the GZK cutoff (i.e. greater than 100 EeV) are scarce. Only a few of such events have been detected by air shower experiments and the nature of the primary particles are…
Extensive air showers still are our only access to the highest-energy particles in the universe, namely cosmic-ray nuclei with energies up to several 100 EeV. Studying open questions in cosmic-ray physics, like their yet unknown origin…
Our Galaxy is the largest nuclear interaction experiment which we know, because of the interaction between cosmic ray particles and the interstellar material. Cosmic rays are particles, which have been accelerated in the Galaxy or in…
Ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) are extremely energetic charged particles that originate from outer space. The Telescope Array (TA) experiment, the largest UHECR observatory in the Northern Hemisphere, has provided high-precision…
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…
Investigations of the origin of cosmic rays are presented. Different methods are discussed: studies of cosmic gamma rays of energy from 30 MeV to about 10^15 eV (since photons point to their places of origin), studies of the mass…
Charged cosmic rays have been measured up to macroscopic energies. Concerning neutrinos, the detection is still limited to terrestrial ones (apart from supernova production). A new way to search for extragalactic neutrinos is discussed.
Detailed composition measurements can be a very powerful means of tracing origins, a fact used regularly by forensic scientists and art historians. One of the main motivating factors for making detailed observations of cosmic rays was…
Cosmic rays are the highest energy particles found in nature. Measurements of the mass composition of cosmic rays between 10^{17} eV and 10^{18} eV are essential to understand whether this energy range is dominated by Galactic or…
The origin of the cosmic rays has been a great mystery since they were discovered by Victor Hess in 1912. AGASA's observation of ultra-high-energy cosmic-rays (UHECR) possibly beyond the GZK (Greisen, Zatsepin and Kuzmin) cutoff stimulated…
After a century of observations, we still do not know the origin of cosmic rays. I will review the current state of cosmic ray observations at the highest energies, and their implications for proposed acceleration models and secondary…
The arguments surrounding the Galactic component of the cosmic rays, the energy budget, questions of composition, spectral features, anisotropy, sources etc, will be critically examined. We are moving into a new phase in the study of the…
We review the physics of the highest energy cosmic rays. The discovery of their sources, still unknown, will reveal the most energetic astrophysical objects in the universe and could unveil new physics beyond the standard model of particle…