Related papers: Mass composition of cosmic rays in anomalous diffu…
Recent measurements of cosmic ray proton and helium spectra show a hardening above a few hundreds of GeV. This excess is hard to understand in the framework of the conventional models of Galactic cosmic ray production and propagation. We…
We investigate the possibility that ultra high energy cosmic rays (E > 10^19 eV) are related to the distribution of matter on large scales. The large scale structure (LSS) data stems from the recent IRAS PSCz redshift survey. We present…
Cosmic ray nuclei fluxes are expected to be measured with high precision in the near future. For instance, high quality data on the antiproton component could give important clues about the nature of the astronomical dark matter. A very…
Recent results from the Pierre Auger Observatory are presented, focusing on a measurement of the cosmic-ray energy spectrum above 10^18 eV, cosmic-ray composition, and the anisotropy in the cosmic ray arrival directions. The flux of cosmic…
Motivated by recent measurements of the major components of the cosmic radiation around 10 TeV/nucleon and above, we discuss the phenomenology of a model in which there are two distinct kinds of cosmic ray accelerators in the galaxy.…
The observations of the total electronic component and the positron fraction in cosmic rays by the FERMI, HESS, ATIC, and PAMELA instruments are studied with analytical propagation models, both for a set of discrete sources and for a…
This paper presents an introduction to the astrophysics of cosmic rays and diffuse gamma rays and discusses some of the puzzles that have emerged recently due to more precise data and improved propagation models: the excesses in Galactic…
The recent observations of the positron fraction in cosmic rays by PAMELA indicate that the fraction of positrons to the total electronic component in cosmic rays initially decreases in the energy region 1-10 GeV and increases thereafter.…
We explore scenarios where the highest energy cosmic rays (HECR) are produced by new particle physics near the grand unification scale. Using detailed numerical simulations of extragalactic cosmic and gamma-ray propagation, we show the…
In this paper we review air shower data related to the mass composition of cosmic rays above 10$^{15}$ eV. After explaining the basic relations between air shower observables and the primary mass and energy of cosmic rays, we present…
In recent years, a number of experiments have been conducted with the goal of studying cosmic rays at GeV to TeV energies. This is a particularly interesting regime from the perspective of indirect dark matter detection. To draw reliable…
It has been speculated that the recently detected ultra-high energy cosmic rays may originate from the decays of relic particles with mass of order $10^{12}$ GeV clustered in the halo of our Galaxy. This hypothesis can be tested through…
The origin of the ultrahigh energy cosmic ray remains being a mystery. However, a considerable progress has been made in the past few years due to the good quality data recorded by current cosmic ray observatories. One of the recent…
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…
The ratio of the number of muons with a threshold of 1 GeV and charged particles at a distance of 600 m from the axis is analyzed. Air showers with energies above 5 EeV and zenith angles with less than 60 degrees are considered. Comparison…
We report an estimation of the injected mass composition of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) at energies higher than 10 EeV. The composition is inferred from an energy-dependent sky distribution of UHECR events observed by the…
A review of several analyses is presented that forces the conclusion that the mass composition of the highest-energy cosmic rays is not proton-dominated. This deduction, combined with the use of a modern hadronic interaction model, should…
The common approach to compute the cosmic-ray distribution in an starburst galaxy or region is equivalent to assume that at any point within that environment, there is an accelerator inputing cosmic rays at a reduced rate. This rate should…
We describe a method for the numerical computation of the propagation of primary and secondary nucleons, primary electrons, and secondary positrons and electrons. Fragmentation and energy losses are computed using realistic distributions…
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…