Related papers: Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays: Some General Featur…
Contemporary models of hadronic interactions are reviewed. Basic phenomenological approaches are compared, with an emphasizes on the predicted air shower characteristics. Special attention is payed to the remaining discrepancies between…
Great advances have been made in the study of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECR) in the past two decades. These include the discovery of the spectral cut-off near 5 x 10^19 eV and complex structure at lower energies, as well as…
High-energy cosmic ray events present important challenges to particle astrophysics. Their nature and origin are often not well understood and, as they occur in an energy domain not accessible to particle accelerators, there is no clear…
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…
The greater part of this paper is concerned with a historical discussion of the development of the search for the origins of the highest-energy cosmic-rays together with a few remarks about future prospects. Additionally, in section 6, the…
Over the last third of the century, a few tens of events, detected by ground-based cosmic ray detectors, have opened a new window in the field of high-energy astrophysics. These events have macroscopic energies, unobserved sources, an…
One of the models recently proposed to explain the origin of the ultra high energy cosmic rays assumes that these particles may be accelerated by the electromotive force around presently inactive quasar remnants. We study predictions for…
A brief review about the chemical composition of cosmic rays in the energy range 10^15 < E < 10^20 eV is given. While there is convincing evidence for an increasingly heavier composition above the knee, no clear picture has emerged at the…
These lectures review some of the techniques used to analyze the arrival direction distribution of Cosmic Rays, and some relevant results on the field.
Ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) are the highest energy messengers of the present universe, with energies up to $10^{20}$ eV. Studies of astrophysical particles (nuclei, electrons, neutrinos and photons) at their highest observed…
In this lecture I give an overview of shock acceleration, interactions of high energy cosmic rays with, and propagation through, the background radiation, and the resulting electron-photon cascade. I argue that while the origin of the…
A brief motivation for studying cosmic rays at energies 10^14 < E < 10^17 eV is given. Besides astrophysical interests in identifying and understanding their sources, there are also particle physics aspects related to their transport…
A review of the status of the knowledge in the field of High-energy cosmic particles is presented. The spectrum, arrival direction distribution and composition measurements are summarized, together with some implications for the…
The energies of cosmic rays, fully ionized charged nuclei, extend over a wide range up to 10^20 eV. A particularly interesting energy region spans from 10^14 to 10^18 eV, where the all-particle energy spectrum exhibits two interesting…
Cosmic ray astronomy attempts to identify and study the sources of ultrahigh energy cosmic rays. It is unique in its reliance on charged particles as the information carriers. While no discrete source of ultrahigh energy cosmic rays has…
We give a brief overview of the current experimental and theoretical status of cosmic rays above ~10**17 eV. We focus on the role of large scale magnetic fields and on multi-messenger aspects linking charged cosmic ray with secondary…
We present the characteristics and performance of a demonstration experiment devoted to the observation of ultra high- energy cosmic ray extensive air showers using a radiodetection technique. In a first step, one antenna narrowed band…
An overview is given on the present status of the understanding of the origin of galactic cosmic rays. Recent measurements of charged cosmic rays and photons are reviewed. Their impact on the contemporary knowledge about the sources and…
In this chapter I give an overview of shock acceleration, including a discussion of the maximum energies possible and the shape of the spectrum near cut-off, interactions of high energy cosmic rays with, and propagation through, the…
The detection of cosmic rays with energy around and in excess of $10^{20}$ eV raises many questions that future experiments will help answering to. I address here my view of some of these open issues, as they are now and as they might be…