Related papers: Evading the GZK Cosmic-Ray Cutoff
The decay of very heavy metastable relics of the Early Universe can produce ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) in the halo of our own Galaxy. In this model, no Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin cutoff is expected because of the short propagation…
Cosmic rays in the regime of 10^19-10^20 eV should not exist, according to the GZK bound. Conflicts between data and the bound have led to suggestions that laws of physics must be modified. We find that physical processes neglected in the…
We address some current theoretical issues around ultra-high energy cosmic rays. We recall that scenarios producing more gamma-rays than cosmic rays up to high redshift can in general only provide a sub-dominant contribution to the…
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…
Recently, interesting 4-D Lorentz violating models have been proposed, in which all particles have a common maximum velocity $c$, but gravity propagates (in the preferred frame) with a different maximum velocity $c_g \neq c$. We show that…
Cosmic high energy neutrinos are inextricably linked to the origin of cosmic rays which is one of the major unresolved questions in astrophysics. In particular, the highest energy cosmic rays observed possess macroscopic energies and their…
We point out that an important portion of the high energy of the cosmic rays from extragalactic sources can be attributed to a Hilbertian repulsive effect, which is a consequence of Einstein equations without cosmological term.
Detecting neutrinos and photons is crucial to identifying the sources of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs), especially for transient sources. We focus on ultrahigh-energy gamma-ray emission from transient sources such as gamma-ray…
Recent evidence appears to confirm that the ultra-high-energy primary cosmic ray spectrum consists mostly of protons. The fact that these protons can traverse large distances to reach Earth allows us to place bounds on Lorentz violations.…
We discuss the effects of diffusion of high energy cosmic rays in turbulent extra-galactic magnetic fields. We find an approximate expression for the low energy suppression of the spectrum of the different mass components (with charge $Z$)…
We discuss the basic difficulties in understanding the origin of the highest energy particles in the Universe - the ultrahigh energy cosmic rays (UHECR). It is difficult to imagine the sources they are accelerated in. Because of the strong…
A re-examination of the atmospheric cascade profile of the highest energy cosmic ray is presented. The study includes air-shower simulations considering different cross sections, particle multiplicity and variation of the…
Cosmic ray events above 10^19 eV have posed a fundamental problem for more than thirty years. Recent measurements indicate that these events do not show the features predicted by the GZK bound. The events may, in addition, display angular…
It is shown that an instanton induced interaction between quarks produces a very deeply bound H-dibaryon with mass below 2M_N, M_H=1718 MeV. Therefore the H-dibaryon is predicted to be a stable particle. The reaction of photodisintegration…
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…
We consider observational constraints on creation of particles induced by hypothetical trans-Planckian effects during the current stage of the Universe expansion. We show that compatibility with the diffuse gamma-ray background measured by…
This is a summary of a series of lectures on the current experimental and theoretical status of our understanding of origin and nature of cosmic radiation. Specific focus is put on ultra-high energy cosmic radiation above ~10^17 eV,…
We discuss some aspects of the propagation of high-energy cosmic rays (CRs) in turbulent magnetic fields, and propose a formula for the diffusion coefficient based on accurate simulations in a wide energy range. We discuss the transition…
Motivated by experimental indications of a significant presence of heavy nuclei in the cosmic ray flux at ultra high energies ($\gtrsim 10^{19} \eV$), we consider the effects of Planck scale suppressed Lorentz Invariance Violation (LIV) on…
The HiRes Collaboration has recently announced preliminary measurements of the energy spectrum of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECR), as seen in monocular analyses from each of the two HiRes sites. This spectrum is consistent with the…