Related papers: Clusters in Very High Energy Cosmic Rays
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…
Massive stars blow powerful winds and eventually explode as supernovae. By doing so, they inject energy and momentum in the circumstellar medium, which is pushed away from the star and piles up to form a dense and expanding shell of gas.…
We study the decays of ultraheavy (m_X \geq 10^{13}GeV) and quasistable (lifetime \tau_X much larger than the age of the Universe t_0) particles as the source of Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHE CR). These particles are assumed to…
Cosmic rays with energies beyond the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin `cutoff' at $\sim 4 \times 10^{10}$ GeV pose a conundrum, the solution of which requires either drastic revision of our astrophysical understanding, or new physics beyond the…
We discuss a specific population of galactic PeVatrons which may be the main source of the galactic cosmic-ray (CR) component well above PeV energies. Supernovae in compact clusters of massive stars are proposed as powerful sources of CRs,…
Results from the KASCADE air shower experiment investigating the origin of cosmic rays in the energy region from 10^13 to 10^17 eV are presented. Attention is drawn on the investigation of interactions in the atmosphere and the energy…
The current status of the ultrahigh energy cosmic ray (UHE CR) enigma and several proposed solutions involving particle physics beyond the standard model are discussed. Emphasis is given to top--down models, and as a main example,…
The topological defect scenario of origin of the observed highest energy cosmic rays is reviewed. Under a variety of circumstances, topological defects formed in the early Universe can be sources of very massive particles in the Universe…
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…
The origin of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) is a half-century old enigma (Linsley 1963). The mystery has been deepened by an intriguing coincidence: over ten orders of magnitude in energy, the energy generation rates of UHECRs, PeV…
We present new data on Cherenkov light observations obtained during the period 1994-2009, after a modernization of the Yakutsk EAS array. A complex analysis of $\xmax$ and its fluctuations $\sigma(\xmax)$ was performed over a wide energy…
Lateral distribution functions of particles in extensive air showers with the energy $E_0 \simeq 10^{19}$ eV recorded by ground-based and underground scintillation detectors with a threshold of $E_{\mu} \simeq 1.0 \times \sec\theta$ GeV at…
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.…
Massive stars blow powerful winds and eventually explode as supernovae. By doing so, they inject energy and momentum in the circumstellar medium, which is pushed away from the star and piles up to form a dense and expanding shell of gas.…
Three regions of excessive flux of cosmic rays with energies of the order of PeV are found in the experimental data of the EAS MSU array at a confidence level greater than 4\sigma. For two of them, there are similar regions in the…
We present a calculation of nuclei propagation with energies above 1 EeV in the intergalactic photon field. The calculation is based on a Monte Carlo approach for the nucleus-photon interaction as well as the intergalactic magnetic field.…
We consider various classes of persistent extragalactic astrophysical sources which have been suggested in literature as possible emitters of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECR). We compare the strength of the claimed correlations by a…
The origin of the highest-energy cosmic rays remains a mystery. The lack of a high energy cutoff in the cosmic ray spectrum together with an apparently isotropic distribution of arrival directions have strongly constrained most models…
Ultra high energy cosmic rays have been see coming from the direction of the local cosmic void. We use this fact to argue that at least some of these these cosmic rays are relatively light magnetic monopoles and that their relative fraction…
The origin of Galactic cosmic rays (CR) is still a matter of debate. Diffusive shock acceleration (DSA) applied to supernova remnant (SNR) shocks provides the most reliable explanation. However, within the current understanding of DSA…