Related papers: Constraining ultra-high-energy cosmic ray composit…
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…
Cosmic rays are energetic charged particles from extraterrestrial sources, with the highest energy events thought to come from extragalactic sources. Their arrival is infrequent, so detection requires instruments with large collecting…
Recent analyses of cosmic ray arrival directions have resulted in evidence for a positive correlation with active galactic nuclei positions that has weak significance against an isotropic source distribution. In this paper, we explore the…
One of the fundamental issues in cosmic ray physics is to explain the nature of cosmic ray acceleration and propagation mechanisms. Thanks to the precise cosmic ray data measured by recent space experiments, we are able to investigate the…
It is shown that our knowledge of the mass composition of cosmic rays is deficient at all energies above 10^17 eV. Systematic differences between different measurements are discussed and, in particular, it is argued that there is no…
Ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays passing through the central region of the Galaxy interact with starlight and the infrared photons. Both nuclei and protons generate secondary fluxes of photons and neutrinos on their passage through the central…
Recent international efforts have brought us closer to unveiling the century old mystery of the origin of cosmic rays. Cosmic ray, gamma ray, and neutrino observatories are reaching the necessary sensitivity to study the highest energy…
We investigate several aspects of the correlations reported by the Pierre Auger Observatory between the highest energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) and galaxies in the Veron-Cetty Veron (VCV) catalog of AGNs. First, we quantify the extent of the…
The muon charge ratio of ultrahigh energy cosmic rays may provide information to detect the composition of the primary cosmic rays. We propose to extract the charge information of high energy muons in very inclined extensive air showers by…
The injection of ultra-high energy cosmic rays in the intergalactic medium leads to the production of a GeV-TeV gamma-ray halo centered on the source location, through the production of a high electromagnetic component in the interactions…
In this work we present the interpretation of the energy spectrum and mass composition data as measured by the Pierre Auger Collaboration above $6 \times 10^{17}$ eV. We use an astrophysical model with two extragalactic source populations…
We explore the possibility of a local origin for ultra high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs). Using the catalogue of Karachentsev et al. including nearby galaxies with distances less than 10Mpc (Local Volume), we search for a correlation with…
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…
The observed interaction energy of cosmic rays with atmospheric nuclei reaches up to a PeV in the center of mass. We compute nucleon-nucleon and nucleon-neutrino cross sections for various generic parton cross sections appearing in string…
Some proposals to account for the highest energy cosmic rays predict that they should point to their sources. We study the five highest energy events (E>10^20 eV) and find they are all aligned with compact, radio-loud quasars. The…
Cosmic-rays with energies exceeding 10^{19} eV are referred to as Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECRs). The sources of these particles and their acceleration mechanism are unknown, and for many years have been the issue of much debate.…
Research in cosmic rays is now nearly a century old, but most of the fundamental questions in this field remain unanswered, on the other hand the perspectives of future studies in the next decade are very bright. New detectors will provide…
One of the most striking astrophysical phenomena today is the existence of cosmic ray particles with energies in excess of 10^20 eV. While their presence has been confirmed by a number of experiments, it is not clear where and how these…
Spectra at the Earth of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECR) from Seyfert nuclei with red shifts z<=0.0092 and from Blue Lacertae objects (BL Lac's) are calculated. The spectra are compared with the experimental data. It is shown that in…
The paper describes methods used for the detection of cosmic rays with energies above 10^18 eV (UHECR, UltraHigh Energy Cosmic Rays). It had been anticipated there would be a cutoff in the energy spectrum of primary cosmic rays around 3…