Related papers: Cosmic ray drift, the second knee and galactic ani…
At present, there is no consensus on whether the spectral break in the cosmic-ray flux of all elements around 4 PeV is a general characteristic of the Milky Way or is determined by a combination of factors that significantly affect the…
All information about primary cosmic rays above the knee has been obtained from results of EAS investigations. At that, two alternative approaches exist: cosmophysical and nuclear physical. In the frame of the first one, all changes in…
The sharp change in slope of the ultrahigh-energy cosmic ray spectrum around 10^{9.6} GeV (the ankle), combined with evidence of a light but extragalactic component near and below the ankle which evolves to intermediate/heavy composition…
We review some of the recent progress in our knowledge about high-energy cosmic rays, with an emphasis on the interpretation of the different observational results. We discuss the effects that are relevant to shape the cosmic ray spectrum…
Our purpose is to evaluate the rate of the maximum energy and the acceleration rate that cosmic rays acquire in the non-relativistic diffusive shock acceleration as it could apply during their lifetime in various astrophysical sites, where…
Growing evidence reveals universal hardening on various cosmic ray spectra, e.g. proton, positron, as well as antiproton fraction. Such universality may indicate they have a common origin. In this paper, we argue that these widespread…
More than fifty years after the discovery of the knee in the cosmic ray spectra, its physical origin remains a mystery. This is partly due to the ambiguity of the energy spectrum of individual composition. Recently, direct measurements from…
We study the cosmic ray arrival distribution expected from a source of neutrons in the galactic center at energies around 1 EeV and compare it with the anisotropy detected by AGASA and SUGAR. Besides the point-like signal in the source…
The process that allows cosmic rays to escape from their sources and be released into the Galaxy is still largely unknown. The comparison between cosmic-ray electron and proton spectra measured at Earth suggests that electrons are released…
The energy spectrum of cosmic rays between 10**16 eV and 10**18 eV, derived from measurements of the shower size (total number of charged particles) and the total muon number of extensive air showers by the KASCADE-Grande experiment, is…
We show that the complex shape of the cosmic ray (CR) spectrum, as recently measured by PAMELA and inferred from Fermi-LAT gamma-ray observations of molecular clouds in the Gould belt, can be naturally understood in terms of basic plasma…
The origin of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays remains one of the central open questions in astroparticle physics. Recent measurements reveal anisotropies in arrival directions, a rigidity-dependent composition dominated by intermediate-mass…
Primary energy spectrum of cosmic rays exhibits a knee at about $3$ PeV where a change in the spectral index occurs. Despite many efforts the origin of such a feature of the spectrum is not satisfactorily solved yet. Here it is proposed…
The observed spectrum of Galactic cosmic rays has several exciting features such as the rise in the positron fraction above ~10 GeV of energy and the spectral hardening of protons and helium at ~300 GeV/nucleon of energy. The ATIC-2…
Investigations of the energy spectrum as well as the mass composition of cosmic rays in the energy range of PeVto EeV are important for understanding both, the origin of the galactic and the extragalactic cosmic rays. Recently, three modern…
A very recent observation by the Auger Observatory group claims strong evidence for cosmic rays above 56 EeV being protons from Active Galactic Nuclei. If, as would be expected, the particles above the ankle at about 2 EeV are almost all of…
The arrival directions of Galactic cosmic rays exhibit anisotropies up to the level of one per-mille over various angular scales. Recent observations of TeV-PeV cosmic rays show that the dipole anisotropy has a strong energy dependence with…
The significant attenuation of the cosmic-ray flux above $\sim 5 10^{19}$ eV suggests that the observed high-energy spectrum is shaped by the so-called GZK effect. This interaction of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) with the ambient…
Recent cosmic ray (CR) experiments discovered that the CR spectra experience a remarkable hardening for rigidity above several hundred GV. We propose that this is caused by the superposition of the CR energy spectra of many sources that…
It has recently been suggested that ultra-high energy cosmic rays could have an extragalactic origin down to the "second knee" at ~4x10^{17}eV. In this case the "ankle" or "dip" at ~5x10^{18}eV would be due to pair production of…