Related papers: Ultra-high Energy Cosmic Rays: a probe into New Ph…
Almost three decades ago, the Fly's Eye experiment recorded the most energetic cosmic-ray ever observed. With an energy of 320 EeV, this event is well beyond the suppression region of the ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECR) spectrum.…
In this talk, I present the last and more precise results obtained in the computation of the final spectra of stable particles issued from the decay of super-heavy X particles (M_X ~ 10^21 to 10^25 eV). Such very energetic decay products,…
The possibility that the Fermi scale is the only fundamental energy scale of Nature is under serious consideration at present, yet cosmic rays may already have provided direct evidence of new physics at a much higher scale. The recent…
Measurements of cosmic ray particles at energies above E = 5 x 10^{14} eV are performed by large area ground based air shower experiments. Only they provide the collection power required for obtaining sufficient statistics at the low flux…
We explore scenarios where the highest energy cosmic rays are produced by new particle physics near the grand unification scale. Using detailed numerical simulations of extragalactic nucleon, gamma-ray, and neutrino propagation, we show the…
Contrary to expectations, several cosmic ray events with energies above $10^{20}$ eV have been observed. The flux of such events is well above the predicted Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin cutoff due to the pion production (via the $\Delta$…
The impressive power-law decay of the energy spectrum of cosmic rays over more than thirty orders of magnitude in intensity and for energies ranging over eleven decades between $\simeq 10^9 $eV and $\simeq 10^{20} $eV is actually dotted…
The properties of galactic cosmic rays are investigated with the KASCADE-Grande experiment in the energy range between $10^{14}$ and $10^{18}$ eV. Recent results are discussed. They concern mainly the all-particle energy spectrum and the…
The origin of Ultra--High Energy ($E \gsim 10^{20}$ eV) Cosmic Rays (UHECR) remains mysterious. I discuss ``top--down'' models, where UHECR originate from the decay of very massive, long--lived particles. I summarize the calculation of the…
The strength and spectrum of the extragalactic magnetic field are still unknown. Its measurement would help answer the question of whether galactic fields are purely a primordial relic or were dynamically enhanced from a much smaller…
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 introduce neutrino astronomy starting from the observational fact that Nature accelerates protons and photons to energies in excess of 10^{20} and 10^{13} eV, respectively. Although the discovery of cosmic rays dates back a century, we…
Particles are accelerated to very high, non-thermal energies in space, solar, and astrophysical plasma environments. In cosmic ray physics, the "Hillas limit" is often used as a rough estimate (or the necessary condition) of the maximum…
Cosmic ray story begins at the beginning of XX century. More then 100 years later, most of the main issues are still open questions, as sources, acceleration mechanism, propagation and composition. There is a continuing fascination with the…
We discuss the production of ultra high energy neutrinos coming from the propagation of ultra high energy cosmic rays and in the framework of top-down models for the production of these extremely energetic particles. We show the importance…
The article gives a brief overview, aimed at nonspecialists, about the goals and selected recent results of the detection of very-high energy gamma-rays (energies above 100 GeV) with ground based detectors. The stress is on the physics…
We discuss the most recent developments in our understanding of the acceleration and propagation of cosmic rays up to the highest energies. In particular we specialize our discussion to three issues: 1) developments in the theory of…
In this report we review the important progress made in recent years towards understanding the experimental data on ultra-high-energy ($E \gtrsim 10^9$ GeV) cosmic rays. We begin with a general survey of the available data, including a…
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…
With the discovery of evidence for neutrino mass, a vivid gamma ray sky at multi-TeV energies, and cosmic ray particles with unexpectedly high energies, astroparticle physics currently runs through an era of rapid progress and moving…