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Origin and propagation of extremely high-energy cosmic rays

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dc.contributor.author Bhattacharjee, P
dc.contributor.author Sigl, G. G
dc.date.accessioned 2008-08-12T09:16:23Z
dc.date.available 2008-08-12T09:16:23Z
dc.date.issued 2000-04
dc.identifier.citation Physics Reports-review section of Physics letters, Vol. 327, No. 3, pp. 109 - 247 en
dc.identifier.issn 0370-1573
dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/2248/3084
dc.description.abstract Cosmic ray particles with energies in excess of 10**20 eV have been detected. The sources as well as the physical mechanism(s) responsible for endowing cosmic ray particles with such enormous energies are unknown. This report gives a review of the physics and astrophysics associated with the questions of origin and propagation of these EHE cosmic rays in the Universe. After a brief review of the observed cosmic rays in general and their possible sources and acceleration mechanisms, a detailed discussion is given of possible "top-down" (non-acceleration) scenarios of origin of EHE cosmic rays through decay of sufficiently massive particles originating from processes in the early Universe. The massive particles can come from collapse and/or annihilation of cosmic topological defects (such as monopoles, cosmic strings, etc.) associated with grand unified theories or they could be some long-lived metastable supermassive relic particles that were created in the early Universe and are decaying in the current epoch. The highest energy end of the cosmic ray spectrum can thus be used as a probe of new fundamental physics beyond Standard Model. We discuss the role of existing and proposed cosmic ray, gamma-ray and neutrino experiments in this context. We also discuss how observations with next generation experiments of images and spectra of EHE cosmic ray sources can be used to obtain new information on Galactic and extragalactic magnetic fields and possibly their origin. en
dc.format.extent 1867231 bytes
dc.format.mimetype application/pdf
dc.language.iso en en
dc.publisher Elsevier en
dc.relation.uri http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9811011v1 en
dc.subject Physical Astronomy Classification Scheme en
dc.subject Physical Astronomy Classification Scheme en
dc.subject Physical Astronomy Classification Scheme en
dc.subject Ultrahigh energy cosmic rays en
dc.subject Topological defects en
dc.subject Acceleration mechanism en
dc.subject Cosmic ray interaction en
dc.title Origin and propagation of extremely high-energy cosmic rays en
dc.type Article en


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