Related papers: Diffusive Shock Acceleration of High Energy Cosmic…
Diffusive shock acceleration (DSA) at relativistic shocks is expected to be an important acceleration mechanism in a variety of astrophysical objects including extragalactic jets in active galactic nuclei and gamma ray bursts. These sources…
Collisionless shock waves, found in supernova remnants, interstellar, stellar, and planetary environments, and laboratories, are one of nature's most powerful particle accelerators. This study combines in situ satellite measurements with…
Galaxy clusters grow by gas accretion, mostly from mergers of substructures, which release powerful shock waves into cosmic plasmas and convert a fraction of kinetic energy into thermal energy, amplification of magnetic fields and into the…
A model is proposed for the origin of cosmic rays (CRs) from ~10^14 eV to the highest energies, >10^20 eV. Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) are assumed to inject CR protons and ions into the interstellar medium of star-forming galaxies--including…
The origin of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) remains an open questions in astrophysics. We explore two primary scenarios for the distribution of UHECR sources, assuming that their production rate follows either the cosmic…
Significant progress has been made over the past decades towards unveiling the sources of the most energetic particles in nature, the ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs). Despite these advancements, the exact astrophysical sites capable…
The energy spectrum, composition and arrival directions of ultrahigh energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) with energy above the cosmic ray ankle, measured by the Pierre Auger Observatory, are inconsistent if their origin is assumed to be…
The question of the origin of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays at relativistic shock waves is discussed in the light of results of recent Monte Carlo studies of the first-order Fermi particle acceleration (Niemiec & Ostrowski 2006, Niemiec et…
The acceleration of charged particles at astrophysical collisionless shock waves is one of the best studied processes for the energization of particles to ultrarelativistic energies, required by multifrequency observations in a variety of…
Interactions of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) accelerated in specific astrophysical environments have been shown to shape the energy production rate of nuclei differently from that of the secondary neutrons escaping from the…
The origin of ultrahigh energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) is an open question. In this proceeding, we first review the general physical requirements that a source must meet for acceleration to 10-100 EeV, including the consideration that the…
Cosmic-rays are ubiquitous, but their origins are surprisingly difficult to understand. A review is presented of some of the basic issues common to cosmic particle accelerators and arguments leading to the likely importance of diffusive…
In spite a lot of theoretical and experimental effort that has been achieved in ultra-high energy cosmic ray (UHECR) scattering research in last few decades, some questions remain unanswered, or partially answered. Two of them, that will be…
The energy spectrum of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECR) is usually calculated for sources with identical properties. Assuming that all sources can accelerate UHECR protons to the same extremely high maximal energy E_max > 10^{20} eV…
One of the main features of astrophysical shocks is their ability to accelerate particles to extremely high energies. The leading acceleration mechanism, the diffusive shock acceleration is reviewed. It is demonstrated that its efficiency…
We discuss a representative selection of particle acceleration mechanisms believed to be operating in Active Galactic Nuclei. Starting from direct electrostatic field acceleration in the vicinity of the black hole up to Fermi-type particle…
The maximum energy to which cosmic rays can be accelerated at weakly-magnetised ultra-relativistic shocks is investigated. We demonstrate that for such shocks, in which the scattering of energetic particles is mediated exclusively by ion…
Diffusive shock acceleration (DSA) of particles at collisionless shocks is the major accepted paradigm about the origin of cosmic rays (CRs). As a theory it was developed during the late 1970s in the so-called test-particle case. If one…
We explore two generic hypotheses for tracing the sources of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) in the Universe: star formation rate density or stellar mass density. For each scenario, we infer a set of constraints for the emission…
A new mechanism for the acceleration of ultra high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) is presented here. It is based on the tunnel-ionization of neutral atoms approaching electrically charged stellar black holes and on the repulsion of the…