PeV cosmic rays : a window on the leptonic era

Abstract

It is shown that a variety of characteristic features of the high-energy hadronic cosmic ray spectra, in particular the abrupt changes in the spectral index that occur around 3 PeV and 300 PeV, as well as the corresponding changes in elemental composition that are evident from kinks in the 〈Xmax 〉 distribution, can be explained in great detail from interactions with relic Big Bang antineutrinos, provided that the latter have a rest mass of ∼ 0.5 eV/c 2

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