Related papers: The 320 EeV Fly's Eye event: a key messenger or a …
We study the spectrum and average mass composition of cosmic rays with primary energies between 10^{17} eV and 10^{18} eV using a hybrid detector consisting of the High Resolution Fly's Eye (HiRes) prototype and the MIA muon array.…
Since their first observation in 1962, the existence of Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECR) remains a mystery in modern astrophysics. Those cosmic rays, with energies well above 50 EeV ($50\times 10^{18}$eV), can hardly be accelerated,…
The latest observations of extensive air showers (EAS) induced by ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECR) appear to indicate, prima facie, a transition to heavy primaries at the highest energies. However, this interpretation, which is based…
A thorough search of the sky exposed at the Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory reveals no statistically significant excess of events in any small solid angle that would be indicative of a flux of neutral particles from a discrete source.…
The field of ultra-high energy cosmic rays made a lot of progresses last years with large area experiments such as the Pierre Auger Observatory, HiRes and the Telescope Array. A suppression of the cosmic ray flux at energies above…
It has been argued that the observations of cosmic particles with energies in excess of $10^8$ TeV represent a puzzle. Its solution requires new astrophysics or new particle physics. We show that the latter is unlikely given that the scale…
The existence of cosmic rays of energies exceeding 10^20 eV is one of the mysteries of high energy astrophysics. The spectrum and the high energy to which it extends rule out almost all suggested source models. The challenges posed by…
The origin of cosmic rays is one of the major unresolved questions in astrophysics. In particular, the highest energy cosmic rays observed possess macroscopic energies and their origin is likely associated with the most energetic processes…
Recent measurements of the properties of cosmic rays above 10^17 eV are summarized and implications on our contemporary understanding of their origin are discussed. Cosmic rays with energies exceeding 10^20 eV have been measured, they are…
The detection of cosmic rays with energy around and in excess of $10^{20}$ eV raises many questions that future experiments will help answering to. I address here my view of some of these open issues, as they are now and as they might be…
Astronomy at the highest energies observed must be performed by studying neutrinos rather than photons because the universe is opaque to photons of these energies. By making observations of neutrinos with energies above 10 EeV one can…
It is commonly accepted that high energy cosmic rays up to $10^{19}$ eV can be produced in catastrophic astrophysical processes. However the source of a few observed events with higher energies remains mysterious. We propose that they may…
During its nine-year lifetime, the Energetic Gamma Ray Experiment Telescope (EGRET) on the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (CGRO) detected 1506 cosmic photons with measured energy E>10 GeV. Of this number, 187 are found within 1 degree of…
Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays, UHECR, are charged particles with energies between $\sim10^{18}\,{\rm eV}$ and $\sim3\times10^{20}\,{\rm eV}\sim50\,{\rm J}$. They exhibit fundamental physics at energies inaccessible to terrestrial…
A promising energy range to look for angular correlation between cosmic rays of extragalactic origin and their sources is at the highest energies, above few tens of EeV ($1\:{\rm EeV}\equiv 10^{18}\:$eV). Despite the flux of these particles…
Cosmic rays with energies exceeding $10^{17}$ eV are frequently registered by measurements of the fluorescence light emitted by extensive air showers. The main uncertainty for the absolute energy scale of the measured air showers is coming…
The sources of ultra-high energy cosmic rays are not yet known. However, the discovery of anisotropic cosmic rays above 57x10^18 eV by the Pierre Auger Observatory suggests that a direct source detection may soon be possible. The…
An overview on the present observational status and phenomenological understanding of cosmic rays above 10^16 eV is given. Above these energies the cosmic ray flux is expected to be gradually dominated by an extra-galactic component. In…
Observations of cosmic rays have been improved at all energies, both in terms of higher statistics and reduced systematics. As a result, the all particle cosmic ray energy spectrum starts to exhibit more structures than could be seen…
We report a measurement of the energy spectrum of cosmic rays for energies above $2.5 {\times} 10^{18}~$eV based on 215,030 events recorded with zenith angles below $60^\circ$. A key feature of the work is that the estimates of the energies…