Related papers: The Lamb Shift and Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays
An explanation of the difference of the charge radius of the proton as determined from the Lamb shift in electronic hydrogen and from elastic electron scattering off the proton on the one side and the recent high precision determination…
Ultra-high energy cosmic rays interacting with the radiation fields in the universe cause electromagnetic cascades resulting in a flux of extragalactic gamma rays, detectable to some 100 GeV. Recent precise measurements of the extragalactic…
The origin of cosmic ray events with $E \gsim 10^{11}$ GeV remains mysterious. In this talk I briefly summarize several proposed particle physics explanations: a breakdown of Lorentz invariance, the ``$Z-$burst'' scenario, new hadrons with…
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 flux of Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECRs) at $E>10^{18.5}$ eV is believed to arise in plasma shock environments in extragalactic sources. In this paper, we present a systematic study of particle acceleration by relativistic shocks,…
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…
Explanations of the origin of ultra-high energy cosmic rays are severely constrained by the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuz'min effect, which limits their propagation over cosmological distances. We argue that possible departures from strict Lorentz…
The origin of ultra-high energy cosmic rays $($UHECRs$)$ remains a mystery. It has been suggested that UHECRs can be produced by the stochastic acceleration in relativistic jets of gamma-ray bursts $($GRBs$)$ at the early afterglow phase.…
Since the early reports of events beyond the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin (GZK) cutoff, the investigation of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays has emerged as a fundamental method for testing Lorentz Invariance violation (LV) effects. Recent advances…
Ultra high energy cosmic rays (UHECR) pose a problem either for particle physics or for astrophysics (or for both) by the unexpectedly high number of cosmic ray showers observed with energy above about 5x10^{19}eV, the…
We show that a tiny but non-zero positive cosmological constant, which has been strongly suggested by the recent astronomical observations on supernovae and CMBR, may change notably the behaviors of the ultrahigh energy cosmic ray…
A calculation based on flat spacetime symmetries shows how there can be two quantum phases. For one, extreme phase change determines a conventional classical trajectory and four-momentum, i.e. mass times four-velocity. The other phase…
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…
We have previously shown that a very small amount of Lorentz invariance violation (LIV), which suppresses photomeson interactions of ultrahigh energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) with cosmic background radiation (CBR) photons, can produce a…
Ultra high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) may interact with photon backgrounds and thus the universe is opaque to their propagation. Many Lorentz Invariance Violation (LIV) theories predict a dilation of the expected horizon from which UHECRs…
Air shower experiments have detected cosmic ray events of energies upto 300 EeV. Most likely these cosmic rays have originated from compact objects. Their exact sources are yet to be identified. It has been suggested before that gamma ray…
We propose that local Lorentz invariance is spontaneously violated at high energies, due to a nonvanishing vacuum expectation value of a vector field \phi^\mu, as a possible explanation of the observation of ultra-high energy cosmic rays…
We show how the "proton radius puzzle" emerging from the measurement of the Lamb shift in muonic hydrogen may be solved by means of a binding energy contribution due to an effective Yukawian gravitational potential related to charged weak…
Ultrahigh energy cosmic rays that produce giant extensive showers of charged particles and photons when they interact in the Earth's atmosphere provide a unique tool to search for new physics. Of particular interest is the possibility of…
We propose that the origin of ultra-high energy cosmic rays beyond the GZK cutoff and the origin of small cosmological constant can both be explained by vacuum tunneling effects in a theory with degenerate vacua and fermionic doublets. By…