Related papers: The origin of the ankle
In the last two decades, different advances with extensive air shower (EAS) experiments have allowed to unveil several details about the composition and energy spectrum of galactic cosmic rays from some TeV up to several hundreds of PeV,…
We examine the first order Fermi acceleration on the presumption that supernova remnant shocks cross ambient magnetic fields with various angles. These oblique shocks accelerate particles more efficiently than the parallel shocks and…
We present preliminary results obtained by a novel difference method for the study of the nature of the knee in the energy spectrum of the primary cosmic radiation. We have applied this method to data from the GAMMA experiment in Armenia.…
We use a kinetic-equation approach to describe the propagation of ultra high energy cosmic ray protons and nuclei and calculate the expected spectra and mass composition at the Earth for different assumptions on the source injection spectra…
A hybrid experiment consisting of emulsion chambers, burst detectors and the Tibet II air-shower array was carried out at Yangbajing (4,300 m a.s.l., 606 g/cm$^2$) in Tibet to obtain the energy spectra of primary protons and heliums. From…
We study the possibility that the gamma ray emission in the Fermi bubbles observed is produced by cosmic ray electrons with a spectrum similar to Galactic cosmic rays. We argue that the cosmic ray electrons steepen near 1 TeV from $E^{-3}$…
Data obtained in the ATIC-2 (Advanced Thin Ionization Calorimeter), CREAM (Cosmic Ray Energetics and Mass)) and PAMELA (Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics) experiments suggest that elemental interstellar…
An overview is given on results from direct and indirect measurements of galactic cosmic rays. Their implications on the contemporary understanding of the origin of cosmic rays and the knee in their energy spectrum are discussed.
A sufficiently magnetized Local Supercluster can explain the spectrum and angular distribution of ultra-high energy cosmic rays. We show that the spectrum of extragalactic cosmic rays with energies below $\sim 10^{20}$ eV may be due to the…
The production of energetic particles in the universe remains one of the great mysteries of modern science. The mechanisms of acceleration in astrophysical sources and the details about the propagation through the galactic and extragalactic…
In most particle acceleration or propagation theories, the characteristic features of the cosmic ray spectra due to acceleration limits or propagation phase changes are charge dependent. Alternatively, the interaction scenario would expect…
There is mounting evidence from observations of long duration gamma ray bursts (GRBs), supernova remnants (SNR) and the supernova (SN) explosion 1987A, that SN explosions eject highly relativistic bipolar jets of plasmoids (cannonballs) of…
Almost half a century ago, Greisen, Zatsepin and Kuz'min (GZK) predicted a "cosmologically meaningful termination" of the spectrum of cosmic rays at energies around $10^{20}$ eV due to their interaction with the cosmic microwave background,…
Our purpose is to evaluate the rate of the maximum energy and the acceleration rate that cosmic rays acquire in the non-relativistic diffusive shock acceleration as it could apply during their lifetime in various astrophysical sites, where…
Cosmic rays are atomic nuclei arriving from outer space that reach the highest energies observed in nature. Clues to their origin come from studying the distribution of their arrival directions. Using $3 \times 10^4$ cosmic rays above $8…
The Earth is bombarded by ultra-relativistic particles, known as cosmic rays (CRs). CRs with energies up to a few PeV (=10$^{15}$ eV), the knee in the particle spectrum, are believed to have a Galactic origin. One or more factories of PeV…
The hypothesis that the electron neutrino is a tachyon with |m|=sqrt(-m^2) = 0.5 eV/c^2 is consistent with certain properties of the cosmic ray spectrum, including: the existence of a change in power law (the "knee") at E = 10^15 eV, the…
The hypothesis that the entire cosmic ray spectrum, from $\lesssim1\,{\rm GeV}$ to $\gtrsim100\,{\rm EeV}$ energy, can be accounted for by diffusive shock acceleration on increasingly large scales is critically examined. Specifically, it is…
We present a new model of anisotropic cosmic ray propagation in the Milky Way, where cosmic rays are injected at discrete transient sources in the disc and propagated in the Galactic magnetic field. In the framework of our model, we show…
The measurement of the anisotropy in the arrival direction of cosmic rays is complementary to the study of their energy spectrum and chemical composition to understand their origin and propagation. It is also a tool to probe the structure…