Related papers: New physics from ultrahigh energy cosmic rays
This is a written version of a series of lectures aimed at graduate students in astrophysics/particle theory/particle experiment. In the first part, we explain the important progress made in recent years towards understanding the…
We explore the influence of new physics on extremely high energy cosmic ray (EXCER) particles. In particular, we devote our mind to one example of new physics, unparticle stuff, on one specific process that EXECRs participate in, photopion…
Ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) are the highest energy messengers of the present universe, with energies up to $10^{20}$ eV. Studies of astrophysical particles (nuclei, electrons, neutrinos and photons) at their highest observed…
We consider the possibility that the ultra-high-energy cosmic ray flux has a small component of exotic particles which create showers much deeper in the atmosphere than ordinary hadronic primaries. It is shown that applying the conventional…
The possibility of detection of some features of high energy particle interactions with detectors placed at medium depths underground through studies on high energy muons is investigated. These muons carry information about the early…
The observation of twenty cosmic-ray air-showers at and above 10^{20} eV poses fascinating problems for particle astrophysics: how the primary particles are accelerated to these energies, how the primaries get here through the 2.7K…
We calculate the flux of neutrinos generated by the propagation of ultra-high energy iron over cosmological distances and show that even if ultra-high energy cosmic rays are composed of heavy nuclei, a significant flux of high-energy…
Decays of mesons produced in cosmic ray induced air showers in Earth's atmosphere can lead to a flux of light exotic particles which can be detected in underground experiments. We evaluate the energy spectra of the light neutral mesons…
We report on a study about some characteristics of muon production during the development of extended air showers initiated by ultra-high-energy cosmic rays. Using simulations with the recent new version of the AIRES air shower simulation…
Cosmic rays interacting with the atmosphere allow for the probing of fundamental interactions at ultra-high energies. We thus obtain limits on strongly coupled new physics models via their imprints on cosmic-ray air showers. Using the Monte…
The first interactions of photon-induced showers are of electromagnetic nature, and the transfer of energy to the hadron/muon channel is reduced with respect to the bulk of hadron-induced showers. This results in a lower number of secondary…
The properties of cosmic rays with energies above 1PeV have to be deduced from the spacetime structure and particle content of the air showers which they initiate. In this review, a summary of the phenomenology of these giant air showers is…
We study the production of cosmogenic neutrinos and photons during the extragalactic propagation of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs). For a wide range of models in cosmological evolution of source luminosity, composition and maximum…
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are sources of energetic, highly variable fluxes of gamma rays, which demonstrates that they are powerful particle accelerators. Besides relativistic electrons, GRBs should also accelerate high-energy hadrons, some…
Ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays passing through the central region of the Galaxy interact with starlight and the infrared photons. Both nuclei and protons generate secondary fluxes of photons and neutrinos on their passage through the central…
Ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) arrive at Earth from the most energetic astrophysical accelerators in the universe. They collide with atoms in the upper atmosphere with energies about ten times higher than any man-made accelerator,…
We explore scenarios where the highest energy cosmic rays are produced by new particle physics near the grand unification scale. Using detailed numerical simulations of extragalactic nucleon, gamma-ray, and neutrino propagation, we show the…
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…
Earth is constantly struck by radiation coming from the interstellar medium. The very low energy end of the spectrum is shielded by the geomagnetic field but charged particles with energies higher than the geomagnetic cutoff will penetrate…
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…