Related papers: New physics from ultrahigh energy cosmic rays
Recent advances in measuring and interpreting cosmic rays from the spectral ankle to the highest energies are briefly reviewed. A knee of heavy primaries and an ankle of light primaries have been observed at about 10^{17} eV. The light…
Very high energy gamma-rays probe the long-standing mystery of the origin of cosmic rays. Produced in the interactions of accelerated particles in astrophysical objects, they can be used to image cosmic particle accelerators. A first…
We will discuss the main relevant aspects of the physics of ultra high energy cosmic rays. After a short recap of the experimental evidences, we will review theoretical models aiming at describing the sources of these extremely energetic…
This review summarizes recent developments in the understanding of high-energy cosmic rays. It focuses on galactic and presumably extragalactic particles in the energy range from the knee (10^15 eV) up to the highest energies observed…
The origin of cosmic rays at all energies is still uncertain. In this paper we present and explore an astrophysical scenario to produce cosmic rays with energy ranging from below $10^{15}$ o $3 \times 10^{20}$ eV. We show here that just our…
Even 100 years after the discovery of cosmic rays their origin remains a mystery. In recent years, TeV gamma-ray detectors have discovered and investigated many Galactic sources where particles are accelerated up to energies of 100 TeV.…
Origin of ultra high energy cosmic rays is an unsolved problem. Several proposals such as Z-burst, decay of super massive matter, susy particles as a primary, neutrino as a primary in extra dimension models exist in the literature which try…
Most models of the origin of ultra high energy cosmic rays rely on the existence of luminous extragalactic sources. Cosmic rays escaping the galaxy where the source is located produce a sufficiently large electric current to justify the…
We explore scenarios where the highest energy cosmic rays (HECR) are produced by new particle physics near the grand unification scale. Using detailed numerical simulations of extragalactic cosmic and gamma-ray propagation, we show the…
High energy neutrinos with energy typically greater than tens of thousands of GeV may originate from several astrophysical sources. The sources may include, for instance, our galaxy, the active centers of nearby galaxies, as well as…
Very recently, a possible clustering of a subset of observed ultrahigh energy cosmic rays above about 40EeV (4x10^19eV) in pairs near the supergalactic plane was reported. We show that a confirmation of this effect would provide information…
In this chapter I give an overview of shock acceleration, including a discussion of the maximum energies possible and the shape of the spectrum near cut-off, interactions of high energy cosmic rays with, and propagation through, the…
Reasons for the current interest in cosmic rays above 10^19 eV are described. The latest results on the energy spectrum, arrival direction distribution and mass composition of cosmic rays are reviewed, including data that were reported…
It is shown that our knowledge of the mass composition of cosmic rays is deficient at all energies above 10^17 eV. Systematic differences between different measurements are discussed and, in particular, it is argued that there is no…
It is thought that Galactic cosmic ray (CR) nuclei are gradually accelerated to high energies (up to ~300 TeV/nucleon, where 1TeV=10^12eV) in the expanding shock-waves connected with the remnants of powerful supernova explosions. However,…
The field of ultra-high energy cosmic rays made a lot of progresses last years with large area experiments such as the Pierre Auger Observatory, HiRes and the Telescope Array. A suppression of the cosmic ray flux at energies above…
Recent measurements of cosmic ray electron energy spectra suggest that above 10 GeV there may be deviations from a single power law spectrum. There are hints (ATIC) for a bump occurring between 100 GeV and 1TeV, meaning that there might be…
The apparent lack of suitable astrophysical sources for the observed highest energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) within $\approx 20$ Mpc is the "GZK Paradox". We constrain representative models of the extra-galactic magnetic field structure by…
Recent observations on ultra high energy cosmic rays (those cosmic rays with energies greater than $\sim 4 \times 10^{18}$ eV) suggest an abundant flux of incoming particles with energies above $1 \times 10^{20}$ eV. These observations…
We briefly discuss some open problems and recent developments in the investigation of the origin and propagation of ultra high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs).