Related papers: Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays
Many of the basic problems in the astrophysics of charged Cosmic Rays remain on principle unresolved by in situ observations in the Solar System due to the chaotic nature of the propagation of these particles in Interstellar space. This…
High-energy photons (above the MeV) are a powerful probe for astrophysics and for fundamental physics under extreme conditions. During the recent years, our knowledge of the high-energy gamma-ray sky has impressively progressed thanks to…
Nature is providing particles with energies exceeding 100 EeV. Their existence imposes immediate questions: Are they ordinary particles, accelerated in extreme astrophysical environments, or are they annihilation or decay products of…
Ultra-high energy cosmic ray protons accelerated in astrophysical objects produce secondary electromagnetic cascades during propagation in the cosmic microwave and infrared backgrounds. We show that such cascades can contribute between ~1%…
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 will review the main physical aspects of Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays. We will discuss in particular their propagation through astrophysical backgrounds, focusing on the latest experimental observations of HiRes, Telescope Array and…
Investigations of the origin of cosmic rays are presented. Different methods are discussed: studies of cosmic gamma rays of energy from 30 MeV to about 10^15 eV (since photons point to their places of origin), studies of the mass…
In this paper we briefly discuss the problem of the origin of Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays in the framework of Top-Down models. We show that, for high energy of decays and in a wide range of spectra of injected protons, their extragalactic…
Theoretical aspects of potential astrophysical sources of the highest energy cosmic rays are discussed, including their energy budget and some issues on particle escape and propagation. After briefly addressing AGN jets and GRBs, we…
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.…
It has been speculated that the recently detected ultra-high energy cosmic rays may originate from the decays of relic particles with mass of order $10^{12}$ GeV clustered in the halo of our Galaxy. This hypothesis can be tested through…
Over the last 30 years or so, a handful of events observed in ground-based cosmic ray detectors seem to have opened a new window in the field of high-energy astrophysics. These events have energies exceeding 5x10**19 eV (the region of the…
The origin of highest energy cosmic rays (UHECR) is yet unknown. In order to understand their propagation we determine the probability that an ultrahigh energy (above 5\cdot 10^{19} eV) proton created at a distance r with energy E arrives…
In the past few years, cosmic-rays beyond the GZK cut-off ($E > 5 \times 10^{19}$ eV) have been detected by leading collaborations such as Pierre Auger Observatory. Such observations raise many questions as to how such energies can be…
In the first part of this review we discuss the basic observational features at the end of the cosmic ray energy spectrum. We also present there the main characteristics of each of the experiments involved in the detection of these…
In the past year, the HiRes and Auger collaborations have reported the discovery of a high-energy cutoff in the ultra-high energy cosmic-ray (UHECR) spectrum, and an apparent clustering of the highest energy events towards nearby active…
Ultra high energy particles arrive at Earth constantly. They provide a beam at energies higher than any man-made accelerator, but at a very low rate. Two large experiments, the Pierre Auger Observatory and the Telescope Array experiment,…
We propose a model in which ultra high energy cosmic rays are produced by collisions between neutron stars and axion stars. The acceleration of such a cosmic ray is made by the electric field, $\sim 10^{15} (B/10^{12} {G}) {eV} {cm}^{-1}$,…
Experimental results on ultra-high-energy cosmic rays are briefly reviewed and their interpretation is discussed. The results related to principal observables (arrival directions, energies and composition) of primary particles of extended…
Very high energy {\gamma}-rays are one of the most important messengers of the non-thermal Universe. The major motivation of very high energy {\gamma}-ray astronomy is to find sources of high energy cosmic rays. Several astrophysical…