Ultra-high-energy cosmic ray
In
These particles are extremely rare; between 2004 and 2007, the initial runs of the Pierre Auger Observatory (PAO) detected 27 events with estimated arrival energies above 5.7×1019 eV, that is, about one such event every four weeks in the 3000 km2 area surveyed by the observatory.[2]
An extreme-energy cosmic ray (EECR) is an UHECR with energy exceeding 5×1019 eV (about 8
If an EECR is not a proton, but a nucleus with A nucleons, then the GZK limit applies to its nucleons, which carry only a fraction 1/A of the total energy of the nucleus. There is evidence that these highest-energy cosmic rays might be iron nuclei, rather than the protons that make up most cosmic rays.[3] For an iron nucleus, the corresponding limit would be 2.8×1021 eV. However, nuclear physics processes lead to limits for iron nuclei similar to that of protons. Other abundant nuclei should have even lower limits.
The hypothetical sources of EECR are known as Zevatrons, named in analogy to
Observational history
The first observation of a cosmic ray particle with an energy exceeding 1.0×1020 eV (16 J) was made by John Linsley and Livio Scarsi at the Volcano Ranch experiment in New Mexico in 1962.[7][8]
Cosmic ray particles with even higher energies have since been observed. Among them was the
The energy of this particle is some 40 million times that of the highest energy protons that have been produced in any terrestrial particle accelerator. However, only a small fraction of this energy would be available for an interaction with a proton or neutron on Earth, with most of the energy remaining in the form of kinetic energy of the products of the interaction (see Collider § Explanation). The effective energy available for such a collision is the square root of double the product of the particle's energy and the mass energy of the proton, which for this particle gives 7.5×1014 eV, roughly 50 times the collision energy of the Large Hadron Collider.
Since the first observation, by the University of Utah's Fly's Eye Cosmic Ray Detector, at least fifteen similar events have been recorded, confirming the phenomenon. These very high energy cosmic ray particles are very rare; the energy of most cosmic ray particles is between 10 MeV and 10 GeV.
Ultra-high-energy cosmic ray observatories
- AGASA– Akeno Giant Air Shower Array in Japan
- Antarctic Impulse Transient Antenna (ANITA) detects ultra-high-energy cosmic neutrinosbelieved to be caused by ultra-high-energy cosmic ray particles
- Extreme Universe Space Observatory
- GRAPES-3 (Gamma Ray Astronomy PeV EnergieS 3rd establishment) is a project for cosmic ray study with air shower detector array and large area muon detectors at Ooty in southern India.
- High Resolution Fly's Eye Cosmic Ray Detector (HiRes)
- MARIACHI – Mixed Apparatus for Radar Investigation of Cosmic-rays of High Ionization located on Long Island, USA.
- Pierre Auger Observatory
- Telescope Array Project
- Yakutsk Extensive Air Shower Array
- Tunka experiment
- The COSMICi project at Florida A&M University is developing technology for a distributed network of low-cost detectors for UHECR showers in collaboration with MARIACHI.
- Cosmic-Ray Extremely Distributed Observatory (CREDO)
Pierre Auger Observatory
Pierre Auger Observatory is an international cosmic ray observatory designed to detect ultra-high-energy cosmic ray particles (with energies beyond 1020 eV). These high-energy particles have an estimated arrival rate of just 1 per square kilometer per century, therefore, in order to record a large number of these events, the Auger Observatory has created a detection area of 3,000 km2 (the size of Rhode Island) in Mendoza Province, western Argentina. The Pierre Auger Observatory, in addition to obtaining directional information from the cluster of water tanks used to observe the cosmic-ray-shower components, also has four telescopes trained on the night sky to observe fluorescence of the nitrogen molecules as the shower particles traverse the sky, giving further directional information on the original cosmic ray particle.
In September 2017, data from 12 years of observations from PAO supported an extragalactic source (outside of Earth's galaxy) for the origin of extremely high energy cosmic rays.[10]
Suggested explanations
Neutron stars
One suggested source of UHECR particles is their origination from
Another hypothesized source of UHECRs from neutron stars is during neutron star to
"Ultra-high-energy cosmic ray electrons" (defined as
Active galactic cores
Interactions with
The source of such high energy particles has been a mystery for many years. Recent results from the Pierre Auger Observatory show that ultra-high-energy cosmic ray arrival directions appear to be correlated with extragalactic supermassive black holes at the center of nearby galaxies called
Some of the supermassive black holes in AGN are known to be rotating, as in the Seyfert galaxy MCG 6-30-15[13] with time-variability in their inner accretion disks.[14] Black hole spin is a potentially effective agent to drive UHECR production,[15] provided ions are suitably launched to circumvent limiting factors deep within the galactic nucleus, notably curvature radiation[16] and inelastic scattering with radiation from the inner disk. Low-luminosity, intermittent Seyfert galaxies may meet the requirements with the formation of a linear accelerator several light years away from the nucleus, yet within their extended ion tori whose UV radiation ensures a supply of ionic contaminants.[17] The corresponding electric fields are small, on the order of 10 V/cm, whereby the observed UHECRs are indicative for the astronomical size of the source. Improved statistics by the Pierre Auger Observatory will be instrumental in identifying the presently tentative association of UHECRs (from the Local Universe) with Seyferts and LINERs.[18]
Other possible sources of the particles
Other possible sources of the UHECR are:
- radio lobes of powerful radio galaxies
- intergalactic shocks created during the epoch of galaxy formation
- hypernovae[19]
- relativistic supernovae[20]
- gamma-ray bursts[21][22]
- decay products of supermassive particles from topological defects, left over from phase transitions in the early universe
- particles undergoing the Penrose effect.
- Preon stars[23]
Relation with dark matter
It is hypothesized that active galactic nuclei are capable of converting dark matter into high energy protons. Yuri Pavlov and Andrey Grib at the Alexander Friedmann Laboratory for Theoretical Physics in Saint Petersburg hypothesize that dark matter particles are about 15 times heavier than protons, and that they can decay into pairs of heavier virtual particles of a type that interacts with ordinary matter.[24] Near an active galactic nucleus, one of these particles can fall into the black hole, while the other escapes, as described by the Penrose process. Some of those particles will collide with incoming particles; these are very high energy collisions which, according to Pavlov, can form ordinary visible protons with very high energy. Pavlov then claims that evidence of such processes are ultra-high-energy cosmic ray particles.[25]
See also
- Extragalactic cosmic ray – very-high-energy particles that flow into the Solar System from beyond the Milky Way galaxy
- HZE ions– High-energy, heavy ions of cosmic origin
- Solar energetic particles – High-energy particles from the Sun
- Oh-My-God particle – Ultra-high-energy cosmic ray detected in 1991
References
- .
- ^
Watson, L. J.; Mortlock, D. J.; Jaffe, A. H. (2011). "A Bayesian analysis of the 27 highest energy cosmic rays detected by the Pierre Auger Observatory". S2CID 119068104.
- ^ PMID 20182484.
- ^
Honda, M.; Honda, Y. S. (2004). "Filamentary Jets as a Cosmic-Ray "Zevatron"". S2CID 11338689.
- ^ a b
S2CID 118376969.
- S2CID 119195822.
- ^ Linsley, J. (1963). "Evidence for a Primary Cosmic-Ray Particle with Energy 1020 eV". .
- ^ Sakar, S. (1 September 2002). "Could the end be in sight for ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays?". Physics World. pp. 23–24. Retrieved 2014-07-21.
- ^ Baez, J. C. (July 2012). "Open Questions in Physics". DESY. Retrieved 2014-07-21.
- ^ "Study confirms cosmic rays have extragalactic origins". EurekAlert!. 21 September 2017. Retrieved 2017-09-22.
- PMID 23405276.
- S2CID 189762075. Retrieved 8 July 2019.
- ^
Tanaka, Y.; et al. (1995). "Gravitationally redshifted emission implying an accretion disk and massive black hole in the active galaxy MCG-6-30-15". S2CID 4348405.
- ^ Iwasawa, K.; et al. (1996). "The variable iron K emission line in MCG-6-30-15". .
- ^
Boldt, E.; Gosh, P. (1999). "Cosmic rays from remnants of quasars?". S2CID 14628933.
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Levinson, A. (2000). "Particle Acceleration and Curvature TeV Emission by Rotating, Supermassive Black Holes". PMID 10991437.
- ^
van Putten, M. H. P. M.; Gupta, A. C. (2009). "Non-thermal transient sources from rotating black holes". S2CID 3036558.
- ^
Moskalenko, I. V.; Stawarz, L.; Porter, T. A.; Cheung, C.-C. (2009). "On the Possible Association of Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays with Nearby Active Galaxies". S2CID 9378800.
- ^
Wang, X.-Y.; Razzaque, S.; Meszaros, P.; Dai, Z.-G. (2007). "High-energy cosmic rays and neutrinos from semirelativistic hypernovae". S2CID 119626781.
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Chakraborti, S.; Ray, A.; S2CID 12490883.
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Waxman, E. (1995). "Cosmological Gamma-Ray Bursts and the Highest Energy Cosmic Rays". S2CID 9827099.
- ^
Milgrom, M.; Usov, V. (1995). "Possible Association of Ultra–High-Energy Cosmic-Ray Events with Strong Gamma-Ray Bursts". S2CID 118923079.
- ^
Hansson, J; Sandin, F (2005). "Preon stars: a new class of cosmic compact objects". S2CID 119063004.
- ^
Grib, A. A.; Pavlov, Yu. V. (2009). "Active galactic nuclei and transformation of dark matter into visible matter". S2CID 13867079.
- ^
Grib, A. A.; Pavlov, Yu. V. (2008). "Do Active Galactic Nuclei Convert Dark Matter Into Visible Particles?". S2CID 14457527.
Further reading
- Elbert, J. W.; Sommers, P. (1995). "In search of a source for the 320 EeV Fly's Eye cosmic ray". S2CID 15510276.
- Clay, R.; Dawson, B. (1997). Cosmic Bullets: High Energy Particles in Astrophysics. ISBN 978-0-7382-0139-9.
- Seife, C. (2000). "Fly's Eye Spies Highs in Cosmic Rays' Demise". S2CID 117341691.
- S2CID 118376969.
External links
- The Highest Energy Particle Ever Recorded The details of the event from the official site of the Fly's Eye detector.
- John Walker's lively analysis of the 1991 event, published in 1994
- Origin of energetic space particles pinpointed, by Mark Peplow for [email protected], published January 13, 2005.