Related papers: Constraints on the Extremely High-Energy Cosmic Ra…
A fundamental question that can be answered in the next decade is: WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF THE HIGHEST ENERGY COSMIC PARTICLES? The discovery of the sources of the highest energy cosmic rays will reveal the workings of the most energetic…
Gamma rays trace accelerated particles, and the observed flux of extragalactic gamma rays therefore constrains the global efficiency for particle acceleration. Extragalactic jets in active galactic nuclei can account for the gamma ray…
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 clustering of ultrahigh energy (>10^{20} eV) cosmic rays (UHECR) suggests that they might be emitted by compact sources. Statistical analysis (Dubovsky et al., 2000) estimated the source density. We extend their analysis to give also…
While several arguments can be proposed against the existence of particles with energy in excess of $(3-5)\times 10^{19}$ eV in the cosmic ray spectrum, these particles are actually observed and their origin seeks for an explanation. After…
Recent evidence from the Pierre Auger Observatory suggests a transition, at 5 EeV-10EeV in the composition of Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECRs), from protons to heavier nuclei such as iron. I consider here the implications of the…
The lack of a high energy cutoff in the cosmic ray spectrum together with an apparently isotropic distribution of arrival directions for the highest energy events have strongly constrained most models proposed for the generation of these…
Gamma-ray bursts and ultra-high-energy cosmic rays provide an important testing ground for fundamental physics. A simple-minded analysis of some gamma-ray bursts would lead to a huge estimate of the overall energy emitted, and this…
It is well known that if the most energetic cosmic rays ($E>10^{20}$ eV) were protons then their acceleration sites should possess some extreme properties, including gigantic luminosity. As no stationary sources with such properties are…
We discuss the GZK horizon of protons and present a method to constrain the injection spectrum of ultrahigh energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) from supposedly identified extragalactic sources. This method can be applied even when only one or two…
Recent studies suggest that the most energetic cosmic rays, exceeding 100 EeV, may primarily consist of $r$-process nuclei. This highlights binary neutron star mergers and collapsars as promising sources of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays…
A posteriori anisotropy study of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) with the Pierre Auger Observatory (PAO) has shown evidence of excess of cosmic ray particles above 55 EeV within $18^{\circ}$ of the direction of the radio galaxy…
We investigate whether ultra--high energy cosmic rays (UHECR) may be preferentially produced in massive galaxy clusters, by looking for correlations between UHECR directions and those of x-ray clusters. We find an excess-above-random of…
We calculate the first order maximal acceleration corrections to the classical electrodynamics of a particle in external electromagnetic fields. These include additional dissipation terms, the presence of a critical electric field, a…
We calculate for the nearest active galactic nucleus (AGN), Centaurus A, the flux of high energy cosmic rays and of accompanying secondary photons and neutrinos expected from hadronic interactions in the source. We use as two basic models…
Interactions of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays with background photons set a limit to the distance cosmic rays reaching us above a certain energy can originate from, making measurements of their fluxes insensitive to properties of sources at…
A mechanism of ultra-high energy cosmic ray acceleration in extragalactic radio sources, at the interface between the relativistic jet and the surrounding medium, is discussed as a supplement to the shock acceleration in `hot spots'. Due to…
We investigate the production of ultra-high-energy cosmic ray (UHECR) in relativistic jets from low-luminosity active galactic nuclei (LLAGN). We start by proposing a model for the UHECR contribution from the black holes (BHs) in LLAGN,…
The apparent lack of suitable astrophysical sources for cosmic rays with E > 10^{19.7} eV (UHECRs) is the "GZK Paradox". We argue that whatever mechanism produces them must also account for events down to ~10^{18.7} eV, including their…
We have published the energy spectrum of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) for E > 10^18.2 eV from our first 5-year observation with the surface detectors of Telescope Array. We found two breaking points in the power-law spectrum, a…