Related papers: Extremely high energy cosmic rays from relic parti…
Ultrahigh energy neutrinos (UHE\nu) scatter on relic neutrinos (R\nu) producing Z bosons, which can decay hadronically producing protons (Z-burst). We compare the predicted proton spectrum with the observed ultrahigh energy cosmic ray…
Over the last 30 years or so, a handful of events observed in ground-based cosmic ray detectors seem to have opened a new window in the field of high-energy astrophysics. These events have energies exceeding 5x10**19 eV (the region of the…
Over the last decade a number of important observational results have been reported using data from the Pierre Auger Observatory. We shall review some of the recent key findings that have significantly advanced our understanding of…
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…
A measurement of the big bang relic neutrinos would open a new window to the early universe. We review various possibilities to detect this cosmic neutrino background and substantiate the assertion that -- apart from the rather indirect…
We propose a new mechanism for explaining the very long lifetime of superheavy dark matter X, which is proposed as a source of the ultra high-energy cosmic rays above the GZK cutoff (5 \times 10^{19} eV). The singlet X particle couples to…
If, as recently reported by the Super-Kamiokande collaboration, the neutrinos are massive, the heaviest one would not be stable and, though chargeless, could in particular decay into a lighter neutrino and a photon by quantum loop effects.…
The clustering of ultra high energy (above 5\cdot 10^{19} eV) cosmic rays (UHECR) suggests that they might be emitted by compact sources. We present a statistical analysis on the source density based on the multiplicities. The propagation…
Several explanations for the existence of Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays invoke the idea that they originate from the decay of massive particles created in the reheating following inflation. It has been suggested that the decay products can…
The flux of high energy cosmic rays coming from the decay of vortons is estimated. If the abundance of loops corresponding to a superconductivity scale coincident with that of the string formation is corrected to be compatible with the…
We revisit the upper limits on the abundance of unstable massive relic particles provided by the success of Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis calculations. We use the cosmic microwave background data to constrain the baryon-to-photon ratio, and…
Cryptons, metastable bound states of matter in the string hidden sector, with dynamically determined masses M_X on the order of 10^{12} GeV and lifetimes tau_X greater than or on the order of 10^{18} yr, may be generated, through inflation,…
We discuss candidates for trans-GZK cosmic rays observed in a variety of detectors. Three types of primaries are represented among the abstracts submitted to this meeting: neutrin os causing a Z-burst, protons arising from the decay of…
We discuss recent models in which neutrinos, which are assumed to have mass in the eV range, originate the highest energy cosmic rays by interaction with the enhanced density in the galactic halo of the relic cosmic neutrino background. We…
The energy losses and spectra of Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECR) are calculated for protons as primary particles. The attention is given to the energy losses due to electron-positron production in collisions with the microwave 2.73 K…
Assuming that there is no GZK (Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin) cut-off and that super-GZK cosmic rays correlate with AGN (Active Galactic Nuclei) at cosmological distances, it is speculated that a relic superheavy particle (X) has its lifetime…
We calculate the cosmic ray spectrum of ultra high energy neutralinos that one should expect provided that the observed ultra high energy cosmic rays are produced by the decay of superheavy particles X, M_X>10^{12} GeV, in supersymmetric…
We consider here the decay of unstable particles in geodesic circular motion around compact objects. For the neutron, in particular, strong and weak decay are calculated by means of a semiclassical approach. Noticeable effects are expected…
In 15 years of data taking the Pierre Auger Observatory has observed no events beyond $10^{11.3}$ GeV. This null result translates into an upper bound on the flux of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays implying $J (> 10^{11.3}$ GeV) $< 3.6 \times…
We study the decays of ultraheavy (m_X \geq 10^{13}GeV) and quasistable (lifetime \tau_X much larger than the age of the Universe t_0) particles as the source of Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHE CR). These particles are assumed to…