No Arabic abstract
The origin of the ultra-high-energy particles we receive on the Earth from the outer space such as EeV cosmic rays and PeV neutrinos remains an enigma. All mechanisms known to us currently make use of electromagnetic interaction to accelerate charged particles. In this paper we propose a mechanism exclusively based on gravity rather than electromagnetic interaction. We show that it is possible to generate ultra-high-energy particles starting from particles with moderate energies using the collisional Penrose process in an overspinning Kerr spacetime transcending the Kerr bound only by an infinitesimal amount, i.e., with the Kerr parameter $a=M(1+epsilon)$, where we take the limit $epsilon rightarrow 0^+$. We consider two massive particles starting from rest at infinity that collide at $r=M$ with divergent center-of-mass energy and produce two massless particles. We show that massless particles produced in the collision can escape to infinity with the ultra-high energies exploiting the collisional Penrose process with the divergent efficiency $eta sim {1}/{sqrt{epsilon}} rightarrow infty$. Assuming the isotropic emission of massless particles in the center-of-mass frame of the colliding particles, we show that half of the particles created in the collisions escape to infinity with the divergent energies. To a distant observer, ultra-high-energy particles appear to originate from a bright spot which is at the angular location $xi sim {2M}/{r_{obs}}$ with respect to the singularity on the side which is rotating towards the observer. We show that the anisotropy in emission in the center-of-mass frame, which is dictated by the differential cross-section of underlying particle physics process, leaves a district signature on the spectrum of ultra-high-energy massless particles. Thus, it provides a unique probe into fundamental particle physics.
We propose a consistent analytic approach to the efficiency of collisional Penrose process in the vicinity of a maximally rotating Kerr black hole. We focus on a collision with arbitrarily high center-of-mass energy, which occurs if either of the colliding particles has its angular momentum fine-tuned to the critical value to enter the horizon. We show that if the fine-tuned particle is ingoing on the collision, the upper limit of the efficiency is $(2+sqrt{3})(2-sqrt{2})simeq 2.186$, while if the fine-tuned particle is bounced back before the collision, the upper limit is $(2+sqrt{3})^{2}simeq 13.93$. Despite earlier claims, the former can be attained for inverse Compton scattering if the fine-tuned particle is massive and starts at rest at infinity, while the latter can be attained for various particle reactions, such as inverse Compton scattering and pair annihilation, if the fine-tuned particle is either massless or highly relativistic at infinity. We discuss the difference between the present and earlier analyses.
The Penrose process of an extremal braneworld black hole is studied. We analyze the Penrose process by two massive spinning particles collide near the horizon. By calculating the maximum energy extraction efficiency of this process, it turns out that the maximal efficiency increases as the tilde charge parameter $d$ of the braneworld blackhole decreases. Interestingly, for the negative value of $d$, the efficiency can be even larger than the Kerr case.
Energy extraction from a rotating or charged black hole is one of fascinating issues in general relativity. The collisional Penrose process is one of such extraction mechanisms and has been reconsidered intensively since Banados, Silk and West pointed out the physical importance of very high energy collisions around a maximally rotating black hole. In order to get results analytically, the test particle approximation has been adopted so far. Successive works based on this approximation scheme have not yet revealed the upper bound on the efficiency of the energy extraction because of lack of the back reaction. In the Reissner-Nordstrom spacetime, by fully taking into account the self-gravity of the shells, we find that there is an upper bound on the extracted energy, which is consistent with the area law of a black hole. We also show one particular scenario in which the almost maximum energy extraction is achieved even without the Banados-Silk-West collision.
We propose a novel approach for observing cosmic rays at ultra-high energy ($>10^{18}$~eV) by repurposing the existing network of smartphones as a ground detector array. Extensive air showers generated by cosmic rays produce muons and high-energy photons, which can be detected by the CMOS sensors of smartphone cameras. The small size and low efficiency of each sensor is compensated by the large number of active phones. We show that if user adoption targets are met, such a network will have significant observing power at the highest energies.
We explore the joint implications of ultrahigh energy cosmic ray (UHECR) source environments -- constrained by the spectrum and composition of UHECRs -- and the observed high energy astrophysical neutrino spectrum. Acceleration mechanisms producing power-law CR spectra $propto E^{-2}$ are compatible with UHECR data, if CRs at high rigidities are in the quasi-ballistic diffusion regime as they escape their source environment. Both gas- and photon-dominated source environments are able to account for UHECR observations, however photon-dominated sources do so with a higher degree of accuracy. However, gas-dominated sources are in tension with current neutrino constraints. Accurate measurement of the neutrino flux at $sim 10$ PeV will provide crucial information on the viability of gas-dominated sources, as well as whether diffusive shock acceleration is consistent with UHECR observations. We also show that UHECR sources are able to give a good fit to the high energy portion of the astrophysical neutrino spectrum, above $sim$ PeV. This common origin of UHECRs and high energy astrophysical neutrinos is natural if air shower data is interpreted with the textsc{Sibyll2.3c} hadronic interaction model, which gives the best-fit to UHECRs and astrophysical neutrinos in the same part of parameter space, but not for EPOS-LHC.