448 research outputs found
High Energy Neutrinos: Sources and Fluxes
We discuss briefly the potential sources of high energy astrophysical
neutrinos and show estimates of the neutrino fluxes that they can produce. A
special attention is paid to the connection between the highest energy cosmic
rays and astrophysical neutrinos.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, submitted to the Proceedings of TAUP 2005
workshop, corrected left panel of figure
On some problems of gamma-astronomy
Gamma ray emissions from young supernova remnants are discussed and calculated. The positron annihilation line is also calculated. Decay of charged pions in remnants cause generation of high energy neutrinos. This emission of neutrinos is reviewed. The CR origin and gamma emission from Magellanic clouds help to establish the intensity gradient in the galaxy. This gamma astronomical data is briefly discussed
Higgs-inspired corrections to the RG flow in the finite-temperature 3D Georgi-Glashow model and its SU(N)-generalization
The Berezinsky-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) RG flow in the ensemble of monopoles
existing in the finite-temperature (2+1)D Georgi-Glashow model is explored in
the regime when the Higgs field is not infinitely heavy, but its mass is rather
of the same order of magnitude as the mass of the W-boson. The corrections to
the standard RG flow are derived to the leading order in the inverse mass of
the Higgs boson. According to the obtained RG equations, the scaling of the
free-energy density in the critical region and the value of the critical
temperature of the phase transition are found to be unaffected by the
finiteness of the Higgs-boson mass. The evolution of the Higgs mass itself is
also investigated and shown to be rather weak, that enables one to treat this
parameter as a constant. The same analysis is further performed in the
SU(N)-case at N>2, where the RG invariance is demonstrated to hold only
approximately, in a certain sense. Modulo this approximation, the critical
behaviour of the SU(N)-model turns out to be identical to that of the
SU(2)-one.Comment: 12 pages, LaTeX2e, no figure
Signatures of Topological Defects
We argue that due to various restrictions cosmic strings and monopole-string
networks are not likely to produce the observed flux of ultra-high energy
cosmic rays (UHECR). Among the topological defects studied so far, the most
promising UHECR sources are necklaces and monopolonia. Other viable sources
which are similar to topological defects are relic superheavy particles. All
these sources have an excess of pions (and thus photons) over nucleons at
production. We demonstrate that in the case of necklaces the diffuse proton
flux can be larger than photon flux, due to absorption of the latter on
radiobackground, while monopolonia and relic particles are concentrated in the
Galactic halo, and the photon flux dominates. Another signature of the latter
sources is anisotropy imposed by asymmetric position of the sun in the Galactic
halo. In all cases considered so far, including necklaces, photons must be
present in ultra-high energy radiation observed from topological defects, and
experimental discrimination between photon-induced and proton-induced extensive
air showers can give a clue to the origin of ultra-high energy cosmic rays.Comment: version accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D. No changes in the
conclusions and in figure
Primordial pairing and binding of superheavy charge particles in the early Universe
Primordial superheavy particles, considered as the source of Ultra High
Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECR) and produced in local processes in the early
Universe, should bear some strictly or approximately conserved charge to be
sufficiently stable to survive to the present time. Charge conservation makes
them to be produced in pairs, and the estimated separation of particle and
antiparticle in such pair is shown to be in some cases much smaller than the
average separation determined by the averaged number density of considered
particles. If the new U(1) charge is the source of a long range field similar
to electromagnetic field, the particle and antiparticle, possessing that
charge, can form primordial bound system with annihilation timescale, which can
satisfy the conditions, assumed for this type of UHECR sources. These
conditions severely constrain the possible properties of considered particles.Comment: Latex, 4 pages. The final version to appear in Pis'ma ZhETF (the
conditions for the primordial binding are specified, some refs added
High Energy Cosmic Rays from Local GRBs
We have developed a model that explains cosmic rays with energies E between
\~0.3 PeV and the energy of the second knee at E_2 ~ 3*10^{17} eV as
originating from a recent Galactic gamma-ray burst (GRB) that occurred ~1 Myr
ago within 1 kpc from Earth. Relativistic shocks from GRBs are assumed to
inject power-law distributions of cosmic rays (CRs) to the highest energies.
Diffusive propagation of CRs from the local GRB explains the CR spectrum near
and above the first knee at E_1 ~ 3*10^{15} eV. The first and the second knees
are explained as being directly connected with the injection of plasma
turbulence in the interstellar medium on a ~1 pc and ~100 pc scales,
respectively. Transition to CRs from extragalactic GRBs occurs at E > E_2. The
origin of the ankle in the CR spectrum at E ~ 4*10^{18} eV is due to photopair
energy losses of UHECRs on cosmological timescales, as also suggested by
Berezinsky and collaborators. Any significant excess flux of extremely high
energy CRs deviating from the exponential cutoff behavior at E> E_{GZK} =
6*10^{19} eV would imply a significant contribution due to recent GRB activity
on timescales t < 10^8 yrs from local extragalactic sources within ~10 Mpc.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures; to appear in the Proceedings of the Aspen2005
Workshop ``Physics at the End of the Galactic Cosmic Ray Spectrum'' (Aspen,
April 2005
Electroweak jet cascading in the decay of superheavy particles
We study decays of superheavy particles into leptons. We show that they
initiate cascades similar to QCD parton jets, if m_X\gsim 10^6 GeV.
Electroweak cascading is studied and the energy spectra of the produced leptons
are calculated in the framework of a broken SU(2) model of weak interactions.
As application, important for the Z-burst model for ultrahigh energy cosmic
rays, we consider decays of superheavy particles coupled on tree-level only to
neutrinos and derive stringent limit for these decays from the observed diffuse
extragalactic -ray flux.Comment: 4 pages, 1 eps figur
Method to extract the primary cosmic ray spectrum from very high energy gamma-ray data and its application to SNR RX J1713.7-3946
Supernova remnants are likely to be the accelerators of the galactic cosmic
rays. Assuming the correctness of this hypothesis, we develop a method to
extract the parent cosmic ray spectrum from the VHE gamma ray flux emitted by
supernova remnants (and other gamma transparent sources). Namely, we calculate
semi-analytically the (inverse) operator which relates an arbitrary gamma ray
flux to the parent cosmic ray spectrum, without relying on any theoretical
assumption about the shape of the cosmic ray and/or photon spectrum. We
illustrate the use of this technique by applying it to the young SNR RX
J1713.7-3946 which has been observed by H.E.S.S. experiment during the last
three years. Specific implementations of the method permit to use as an input
either the parameterized VHE gamma ray flux or directly the raw data. The
possibility to detect features in the cosmic rays spectrum and the error in the
determination of the parent cosmic ray spectrum are also discussed.Comment: 20 pages, 6 figures, version accepted for publication in Phys.ReV.
On astrophysical solution to ultra high energy cosmic rays
We argue that an astrophysical solution to UHECR problem is viable. The
pectral features of extragalactic protons interacting with CMB are calculated
in model-independent way. Using the power-law generation spectrum as the only assumption, we analyze four features of the proton
spectrum: the GZK cutoff, dip, bump and the second dip. We found the dip,
induced by electron-positron production on CMB, as the most robust feature,
existing in energy range eV. Its shape is
stable relative to various phenomena included in calculations. The dip is well
confirmed by observations of AGASA, HiRes, Fly's Eye and Yakutsk detectors. The
best fit is reached at , with the allowed range 2.55 - 2.75. The
dip is used for energy calibration of the detectors. After the energy
calibration the fluxes and spectra of all three detectors agree perfectly, with
discrepancy between AGASA and HiRes at eV being not
statistically significant. The agreement of the dip with observations should be
considered as confirmation of UHE proton interaction with CMB. The dip has two
flattenings. The high energy flattening at eV
automatically explains ankle. The low-energy flattening at eV provides the transition to galactic cosmic rays. This transition is
studied quantitatively. The UHECR sources, AGN and GRBs, are studied in a
model-dependent way, and acceleration is discussed. Based on the agreement of
the dip with existing data, we make the robust prediction for the spectrum at
eV to be measured in the nearest future by
Auger detector.Comment: Revised version as published in Phys.Rev. D47 (2006) 043005 with a
small additio
Critical behavior of the (2+1)-dimensional Thirring model
We investigate chiral symmetry breaking in the (2+1)-dimensional Thirring
model as a function of the coupling as well as the Dirac flavor number Nf with
the aid of the functional renormalization group. For small enough flavor number
Nf < Nfc, the model exhibits a chiral quantum phase transition for sufficiently
large coupling. We compute the critical exponents of this second order
transition as well as the fermionic and bosonic mass spectrum inside the broken
phase within a next-to-leading order derivative expansion. We also determine
the quantum critical behavior of the many-flavor transition which arises due to
a competition between vector and chiral-scalar channel and which is of second
order as well. Due to the problem of competing channels, our results rely
crucially on the RG technique of dynamical bosonization. For the critical
flavor number, we find Nfc ~ 5.1 with an estimated systematic error of
approximately one flavor.Comment: 28 pages, 14 figure
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