Related papers: Evading the GZK Cosmic-Ray Cutoff
In a recently proposed model the cosmic rays spectrum at energies above 10^{18} eV can be fitted with a minimal number of unknown parameters assuming that the extragalactic cosmic rays are only protons with a power law source spectrum…
The significant attenuation of the cosmic-ray flux above $\sim 5 10^{19}$ eV suggests that the observed high-energy spectrum is shaped by the so-called GZK effect. This interaction of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) with the ambient…
Some inconsistencies to the assumption of a cosmological origin of the cosmic microwave background CMB, such as the absence of gravitational lensing in the WMAP data, open the doors to some speculations such as a local origin to the CMB. We…
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…
The ultra-high energy cosmic rays observed at the Earth are most likely accelerated in extra-galactic sources. For the typical luminosities invoked for such sources, the electric current associated to the flux of cosmic rays that leave them…
Recent advances in measuring and interpreting cosmic rays from the spectral ankle to the highest energies are briefly reviewed. The prime question at the highest energies is about the origin of the flux suppression observed at E ~ 4x10^{19}…
We briefly discuss the implications of recent AUGER results for patterns of Lorentz symmetry violation (LSV), assuming that the existence of the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin cutoff is definitely confirmed. The mass composition of the…
This year we are celebrating 101 years since the discovery of cosmic rays. They are whizzing all around the Universe, and they occur at very different energies, including the highest particle energies that exist. However, theory predicts an…
Recent measurements of the cosmic microwave background confirm that it is described by a Planckian distribution with high precision. It is non-extensivity bounded to be less than some parts in $10^5$, or to some parts in $10^4$ at most.…
If the neutrinos are to be identified with the primary source of ultra-high energy cosmic rays(UHECR), their interaction on relic neutrinos is of great importance in understanding their long intergalactic journey. In theories with large…
We investigate the propagation of a charged particle in a spatially constant but time dependent pseudoscalar background. Physically this pseudoscalar background could be provided by a relic axion density. The background leads to an explicit…
On the analogy with the Lamb shift, we study the vacuum effect that proton's electric field interacts with virtual particles in the vacuum. We find a possible quantum instability that triggered by an external force, proton's electric field…
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…
Final results from the High Resolution Fly's Eye (HiRes) on the observation of the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin cutoff in the cosmic ray spectrum are presented. We observe a cutoff consistent with the GZK predictions with a five sigma…
In this lecture I give an overview of shock acceleration, interactions of high energy cosmic rays with, and propagation through, the background radiation, and the resulting electron-photon cascade. I argue that while the origin of the…
The energy spectra of ultra high energy cosmic rays reported by the AGASA, Fly's Eye, Haverah Park, HiRes, and Yakutsk experiments are all shown to be in agreement with each other for energies below 10^{20} eV (after small adjustments,…
The implications of AUGER and HiRes results for patterns of Lorentz symmetry violation (LSV) are examined, focusing on weak doubly special relativity (WDSR). If the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin (GZK) cutoff is definitely confirmed, the mass…
Neutrinos from far away sources annihilating at the Z resonance on relic neutrinos may give origin to the ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays. Here we present predictions of this mechanism with relic neutrinos lighter than 1 eV, which do not…
Using the propagation of ultra high energy nucleons, photons and electrons in the universal radiation backgrounds, we obtain limits on the luminosity of topological defects scenarios for the origin of the highest energy cosmic rays. The…
Should projects of space experiments on ultra-high energy cosmic rays be supported, whatever AUGER results will turn out to be? We claim that this is indeed the case. It is now widely admitted that models of Lorentz symmetry violation (LSV)…