Related papers: Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays: Observations and Th…
The Southern Pierre Auger Observatory is now nearing completion and the accumulating data sample has already allowed to extract scientific results of relevance for ultra-high energy cosmic-ray (UHECR) physics. This lecture focuses on the…
Under the hypothesis that Gamma Ray Burst (GRB) might be responsible for the origin of Ultra High Energy Cosmic Ray (UHECR), we propose a two component (galactic and extra-galactic) model for the UHECR origin. The model is based on two…
This is a summary of a series of lectures on the current experimental and theoretical status of our understanding of origin and nature of cosmic radiation. Specific focus is put on ultra-high energy cosmic radiation above ~10^17 eV,…
Recent measurements of the properties of cosmic rays above 10^17 eV are summarized and implications on our contemporary understanding of their origin are discussed. Cosmic rays with energies exceeding 10^20 eV have been measured, they are…
Ultra-high energy cosmic rays are mostly charged particles and they are therefore deflected by magnetic fields on their path from their sources to Earth. An interesting phenomenon arising from these deflections is the appearance of multiple…
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…
Research in cosmic rays is now nearly a century old, but most of the fundamental questions in this field remain unanswered, on the other hand the perspectives of future studies in the next decade are very bright. New detectors will provide…
The clustering of ultra high energy (above 10^20 eV) cosmic rays (UHECR) suggests that they might be emitted by compact sources. Statistical analysis of Dubovsky et al. (Phys. Rev. Lett. 85 (2000) 1154) estimated the source density. We…
In its Phase I, the Pierre Auger Observatory has led to several observations, driving the field of ultra-high-energy cosmic ray (UHECR) research over the last 20 years. Major achievements obtained so far include the unprecedented precise…
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 discuss several effects due to lensing of ultra high energy cosmic rays by the regular component of the galactic magnetic field. Large flux magnification around caustics can be a significant source of clustering in the arrival directions…
The origin of the highest energy cosmic rays represents one of the most conspicuous enigmas of modern astrophysics, in spite of gigantic experimental efforts in the past fifty years, and of active theoretical research. The past decade has…
Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECR) can be a signal from very early (post-inflationary) Universe. At this cosmological epoch Topological Defects (TD) and long-lived suprheavy (SH) particles are expected to be naturally and effectively…
The lack of a high energy cutoff in the cosmic ray spectrum together with an apparently isotropic distribution of arrival directions for the highest energy events have strongly constrained most models proposed for the generation of these…
We consider the astrophysical implications of the diffusion equation solution for Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECR) in the expanding universe, obtained in paper I (V.Berezinsky & A.Gazizov, ApJ 643 (2006) 8). The UHECR spectra are…
In this talk, I present the last and more precise results obtained in the computation of the final spectra of stable particles issued from the decay of super-heavy X particles (M_X ~ 10^21 to 10^25 eV). Such very energetic decay products,…
Recent results from the Pierre Auger Observatory show energy dependent chemical composition of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays (UHECR) with a growing fraction of heavy elements at high energies. This points to a non-negligible contribution of…
Cosmic ray particles with energies in excess of 10**(20) eV have been detected. The sources as well as the physical mechanism(s) responsible for endowing cosmic ray particles with such enormous energies are unknown. This report gives a…
Spectra at the Earth of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECR) from Seyfert nuclei with red shifts z<=0.0092 and from Blue Lacertae objects (BL Lac's) are calculated. The spectra are compared with the experimental data. It is shown that in…
Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECRs), particles characterized by energies exceeding $10^{18}$ eV, are generally believed to be accelerated electromagnetically in high-energy astrophysical sources. One promising mechanism of UHECR…