A method to search for correlations of ultra-high energy cosmic ray masses with the large scale structures in the local galaxy density field

One of the main goals of investigations using present and future giant extensive air shower (EAS) arrays is the mass composition of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs). A new approach to the problem is presented, combining analysis of arrival directions with the statistical test of the paired EAS samples. An idea of the method is to search for possible correlations of UHECR masses with their separate sources, for instance, if there are two sources in different areas of the celestial sphere injecting different nuclei, but fluxes are comparable so that arrival directions are isotropic, the aim is to reveal a difference in the mass composition of CR fluxes. The method is based on a non-parametric statistical test -- the Wilcoxon signed-rank routine -- which does not depend on the populations fitting any parameterized distributions. Two particular algorithms are proposed: first, using measurements of the depth of EAS maximum position in the atmosphere; and second, relying on the age variance of air showers initiated by different primary particles. The formulated method is applied to the Yakutsk array data, in order to demonstrate the possibility of searching for a difference in average mass composition of the two UHECR sets, arriving particularly from the supergalactic plane and a complementary region.Comment: Presented at International Symposium on Future Directions in UHECR Physics, 13-16 February 2012 CERN. Accepted for publication in AP

Super-strong interacting gravitons as a main engine of the universe without expansion or dark energy

The basic cosmological conjecture about the Dopplerian nature of redshifts may be false if gravitons are super-strong interacting particles. A quantum mechanism of classical gravity and the main features of a new cosmological paradigm based on it are described here.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, LaTeX. Final version of a Contribution to The sixth international symposium "Frontiers of Fundamental and Computational Physics" (FFP6), 26-29 September 2004, Udine, Ital

The graviton background: a new way to quantum gravity

Graviton pairing and destruction of these pairs under collisions with bodies may lead to the Newtonian attraction. It opens us a new way to a very-low-energy quantum gravity model. In the model by the author, cosmological redshifts are caused by interactions of photons with gravitons of the background. Non-forehead collisions with gravitons lead to an additional relaxation of any photonic flux. Total galaxy number counts/redshift and galaxy number counts/magnitude relations are computed and found to be in a good agreement with galaxy observations.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, Latex. Poster contribution to the 12th symposium on particle physics, string theory and cosmology (PASCOS 2006), September 10 - 15, 2006, Columbus, Ohi