No Arabic abstract
Tipler has shown that if we assume that the particle physics Standard Model and DeWitt-Wheeler quantum gravity (equivalent to Feynman-Weinberg quantum gravity) are a Theory of Everything, then in the very early universe, the Cosmic Background Radiation (CBR) could not have coupled to right handed electrons and quarks. Tipler further showed that if this property of CBR has continued, the Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) effect would be observed to be too low by a factor of two. WMAP and PLANCK observed this. Tipler showed that this CBR property would also mean the Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECR) would propagate a factor of ten further than standard theory predicts, since most of the cross section for pion production when a UHECR hits a CBR photon is due to a quark spin flip, and such a flip cannot occur if a CBR particle cannot couple to right-handed quarks. We show that taking this additional propagation distance into account allows us to identify the sources of 86% of the UHECR seen by the Pierre Auger Collaboration. We can also identify the sources of 9 of the 11 UHECR seen by the AGASA observatory, and the source of the 320 EeV UHECR seen by the Flys Eye instrument. We propose observations to test the theory underlying the UHECR identifications, beginning with measuring the redshifts of five galaxies whose apparent visual magnitude we estimate to be about 15, and whose positions we give to within one arcsecond. The particle physics Standard Model identifies the Dark Energy and Dark Matter.
I have shown that if we assume that the Standard Model of particle physics and Feynman-Weinberg quantum gravity holds at all times, then in the very early universe, the Cosmic Background Radiation (CBR) cannot couple to right handed electrons and quarks. If this property of CBR has persisted to the present day, the Ultra HIgh Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECR) can propagate a factor of ten further than they could if the CBR were an electromagnetic field, since most of the cross section for pion production when a UHECR hits a CBR photon is due to a quark spin flip, and such a flip cannot occur if the CBR photon cannot couple to right handed quarks. The GZM effect will still reduce the number of UHECR, but UHECR can arrive from a distance of a redshift of up to $z=0.1$. I show that taking this additional propagation distance into account allows us to identify the sources of 4 of the 6 UHECR which the Pierre Auger Collaboration could not identify, and also identify the source of the 320 EeV UHECR seen by the Flys Eye instrument. I suggest an experiment to test this hypothesis about the CBR.
Modelling of cosmic ray transport and interpretation of cosmic ray data ultimately rely on a solid understanding of the interactions of charged particles with turbulent magnetic fields. The paradigm over the last 50 years has been the so-called quasi-linear theory, despite some well-known issues. In the absence of a widely accepted extension of quasi-linear theory, wave-particle interactions must also be studied in numerical simulations where the equations of motion are directly solved in a realisation of the turbulent magnetic field. The applications of such test particle simulations of cosmic rays are manifold: testing transport theories, computing parameters like diffusion coefficients or making predictions for phenomena beyond standard diffusion theories, e.g. for cosmic ray small-scale anisotropies. In this review, we seek to give a low-level introduction to test particle simulations of cosmic rays, enabling readers to perform their own test particle simulations. We start with a review of quasi-linear theory, highlighting some of its issues and suggested extensions. Next, we summarise the state-of-the-art in test particle simulations and give concrete recipes for generating synthetic turbulence. We present a couple of examples for applications of such simulations and comment on an important conceptual detail in the backtracking of particles.
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 associated with a new particle physics threshold must be of order 1 GeV, not TeV and above, in order to resolve the problem. In most cases such new physics should have been revealed by accelerator experiments. We examine the possibility that the highest energy cosmic rays are initiated by non-standard interactions of neutrinos in the atmosphere. We show that proposals in this direction either violate s-wave unitarity or fall short of producing a sizeable effect by several orders of magnitude.
This is a historical account from my personal perspective of the development over the last few decades of the standard model of particle physics. The model is based on gauge theories, of which the first was quantum electrodynamics, describing the interactions of electrons with light. This was later incorporated into the electroweak theory, describing electromagnetic and weak nuclear interactions. The standard model also includes quantum chromodynamics, the theory of the strong nuclear interactions. The final capstone of the model was the Higgs particle discovered in 2012 at CERN. But the model is very far from being the last word; there are still many gaps in our understanding.
Secondary nuclear production physics is receiving increased attention given the high-quality measurements of the gamma-ray emissivity of local interstellar gas between ~50 MeV and ~40 GeV, obtained with the Large Area Telescope on board the Fermi space observatory. More than 90% of the gas-related emissivity above 1 GeV is attributed to gamma-rays from the decay of neutral pions formed in collisions between cosmic rays and interstellar matter, with lepton-induced processes becoming increasingly important below 1 GeV. The elementary kinematics of neutral pion production and decay are re-examined in light of two physics questions: does isobaric production follow a scaling behavior? and what is the minimum proton kinetic energy needed to make a gamma-ray of a certain energy formed through intermediate pi0 production? The emissivity spectrum will allow the interstellar cosmic-ray spectrum to be determined reliably, providing a reference for origin and propagation studies as well as input to solar modulation models. A method for such an analysis and illustrative results are presented.