Related papers: Non-linear quantum mechanics and high energy cosmi…
Observations of cosmic rays have been improved at all energies, both in terms of higher statistics and reduced systematics. As a result, the all particle cosmic ray energy spectrum starts to exhibit more structures than could be seen…
Non-tachyonic superluminal sectors of matter (superbradyons), with critical speeds in vacuum much larger than the speed of light, can quite naturally exist and play an important role in both cosmic-ray physics (anomalous high-energy events)…
Scattering processes in the cosmic microwave background limit the propagation of ultra high energy charged particles in our Universe. For extragalactic proton sources resonant photopion production results in the famous…
The origin of the highest energy cosmic rays remains an enigma. They offer a window to new physics, including tests of physical laws relevant to their propagation and interactions, at energies unattainable by terrestrial accelerators. They…
We discuss the possibility of explaining the observation of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays with energy above the GZK cutoff, saving the relativity principle and the (possibly deformed) Lorentz symmetry, as proposed recently by several…
The origin of cosmic rays is one of the major unresolved astrophysical questions. In particular, the highest energy cosmic rays observed possess macroscopic energies and their origin is likely to be associated with the most energetic…
It is often claimed that there should be a 'GZK cut-off" in the flux of extragalactic cosmic rays, arising from interactions between the cosmic rays and the cosmic micro-wave background photons (e.g. 1 and 2). Some experiments (3 and 4)…
In a recent letter [1] with the same title, Farrar and Piran offered an explanation for the near isotropy of the arrival directions [2] of ultrahigh energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) and the apparent absence [3] of the so called `GZK cutoff' in…
It has been recently observed that small violations of Lorentz invariance, of a type which may arise in quantum gravity, could explain both the observations of cosmic rays above the GZK cutoff and the observations of 20-TeV gamma rays from…
The existence of cosmic rays of energies exceeding 10^20 eV is one of the mysteries of high energy astrophysics. The spectrum and the high energy to which it extends rule out almost all suggested source models. The challenges posed by…
Extremely high-energy(EHE) cosmic rays might provide a chance to check a violation of the Lorentz symmetry of spacetime. Some theoretical consideration is described about why the Lorentz symmetry might break-down in EHE phenomena in this…
After a century of observations, we still do not know the origin of cosmic rays. I will review the current state of cosmic ray observations at the highest energies, and their implications for proposed acceleration models and secondary…
Existing data hints that high energy cosmic ray experiments may offer the most promissing shot at finding a dark matter particle. A search in the PeV mass range is suggested, where the discovery of such a particle might help explain the GZK…
Classical electromagnetism is linear. However, fields can polarize the vacuum Dirac sea, causing quantum nonlinear electromagnetic phenomena, e.g., scattering and splitting of photons, that occur only in very strong fields found in neutron…
It has been argued that the observations of cosmic particles with energies in excess of $10^8$ TeV represent a puzzle. Its solution requires new astrophysics or new particle physics. We show that the latter is unlikely given that the scale…
This article examines the consequences of the existence of an upper particle momentum limit in quantum electrodynamics, where this momentum limit is the Planck momentum. The method used is Fourier analysis as developed already by Fermi in…
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}…
The Ultra-high energy cosmic ray energy spectrum summarized by the AGASA collaboration indicates clearly that the cosmic ray spectrum extends well beyond the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin (GZK) cut-off at \sim 5 x 10^19 eV. Furthermore, despite…
The origin of cosmic ray events with $E \gsim 10^{11}$ GeV remains mysterious. In this talk I briefly summarize several proposed particle physics explanations: a breakdown of Lorentz invariance, the ``$Z-$burst'' scenario, new hadrons with…
The properties of strangelets are reviewed and two experiments searching for them in cosmic rays are described. The prospects for strangelets as ultra-high energy cosmic rays beyond the classical GZK-cutoff are discussed.