Related papers: Cosmic-Ray Positrons: Are There Primary Sources?
Cosmic rays are nowadays a crucial tool to study the astrophysics of extreme objects in the Universe, the cosmic environmental plasma (both Galactic and extra-galactic), the physics of nuclear interactions or the properties of elementary…
It is argued that there are three `origins' of cosmic rays; the origin of the particles, the origin of the energy, and the site of the acceleration. The evidence for each origin is discussed and a plausible synthesis outlined for the…
The center of our Galaxy is a complex region characterized by extreme phenomena. The presence of the supermassive Sagittarius A* black hole, a high Dark Matter density and an even higher baryonic density are able to produce very energetic…
The origin of the highest energy cosmic rays is still unknown. The discovery of their sources will reveal the workings of the most energetic astrophysical accelerators in the universe. Current observations show a spectrum consistent with an…
We review the physics of the highest energy cosmic rays. The discovery of their sources, still unknown, will reveal the most energetic astrophysical objects in the universe and could unveil new physics beyond the standard model of particle…
We compare the expected abundance of cosmic-ray electrons and positrons from pulsars and magnetars. We assume that the distribution of infant pulsars and magnetars follows that of high-mass stars in the Milky Way and that the production…
More and more experiments have identified that the energy spectra of both primary and secondary cosmic-rays exhibit a hardening above $\sim 200$ GV. Most recently, the DAMPE experiment has reported a hardening of boron-to-carbon ratio at…
It is presumed that the observed cosmic rays up to about $3\times 10^{18}$ eV are of Galactic origin, the particles being the ones which are found in the composition of the stellar winds of stars that explode as supernova into the…
A number of signals involving charged cosmic rays and high-energy photons have been interpreted as being due to annihilating dark matter. This article provides an overview of the experimental evidence and discusses in particular detections…
Cosmic rays are charged relativistic particles that reach the Earth with extremely high energies, providing striking evidence of the existence of effective accelerators in the Universe. Below an energy around $\sim 10^{17}$ eV cosmic rays…
Our Galaxy is the largest nuclear interaction experiment which we know, because of the interaction between cosmic ray particles and the interstellar material. Cosmic rays are particles, which have been accelerated in the Galaxy or in…
We discuss the possibility of observing ultra high energy cosmic ray sources inhigh energy gamma rays. Protons propagating away from their accelerators produce secondary electrons during interactions with cosmic microwave background…
We propose that the dense quark matter could be a source of the high-energy secondary hadrons. These particles can be created from hadronization of the parton(s), which possess the energy of grouped partons from coherent interactions as a…
We show that the positron excess measured by the PAMELA experiment in the region between 10 and 100 GeV may well be a natural consequence of the standard scenario for the origin of Galactic cosmic rays. The 'excess' arises because of…
We briefly review sources of cosmic rays, their composition and spectra as well as their propagation in the galactic and extragalactic magnetic fields, both regular and fluctuating. A special attention is paid to the recent results of the…
Most cosmic ray particles observed derive from the explosions of massive stars, which commonly produce stellar black holes in their supernova explosions. When two such black holes find themselves in a tight binary system they finally merge…
The positron fraction in cosmic rays was found to be steadily increasing in function of energy, above $\sim$10 GeV. This behaviour contradicts standard astrophysical mechanisms, in which positrons are secondary particles, produced in the…
Positrons are known to be produced in interactions between cosmic-ray nuclei and interstellar matter ("secondary production"). Positrons may, however, also be created by dark matter particle annihilations in the galactic halo or in the…
The rapid rise in the cosmic ray positron fraction above 10 GeV, as measured by PAMELA and AMS, suggests the existence of nearby primary sources of high energy positrons, such as pulsars or annihilating/decaying dark matter. In contrast,…
Measurements of cosmic-ray (CR) positron fraction by PAMELA and other experiments have found an excess above 10 GeV relative to the standard predictions for secondary production in the interstellar medium (ISM). Although the excess has been…