Comment on "The Lamb Shift and Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays" and Comment on "Vacuum Polarization Energy Losses of High Energy Cosmic Rays"

The cosmic rays spectrum has been shown to extend well beyond 10^20 eV. With nearly 20 events observed in the last 40 years, it is now established that particles with energies near or above 10^21 eV. No nearby astrophysical object has been shown to correlate with the arrival directions of the highest energy events, yet the exponential cut-off in the high energy end of the spectrum one expects to see in the case of far sources is not visible. It was recently pointed out that the influence of the vacuum of quantum electrodynamics on particle propagation could explain qualitatively this mystery. This note is a critic to these ideas.Comment: 4 pages, note on second paper correcte

Searches for Large-Scale Anisotropies of Cosmic Rays: Harmonic Analysis and Shuffling Technique

The measurement of large scale anisotropies in cosmic ray arrival directions is generally performed through harmonic analyses of the right ascension distribution as a function of energy. These measurements are challenging due to the small expected anisotropies and meanwhile the relatively large modulations of observed counting rates due to experimental effects. In this paper, we present a procedure based on the shuffling technique to carry out these measurements, applicable to any cosmic ray detector without any additional corrections for the observed counting rates.Comment: 22 pages, 10 figures, to appear in Astroparticle Physic

The Small Contribution of Molecular Bremsstrahlung Radiation to the Air-Fluorescence Yield of Cosmic Ray Shower Particles

A small contribution of molecular Bremsstrahlung radiation to the air-fluorescence yield in the UV range is estimated based on an approach previously developed in the framework of the radio-detection of showers in the gigahertz frequency range. First, this approach is shown to provide an estimate of the main contribution of the fluorescence yield due to the de-excitation of the C $^3\Pi_{\mathrm{u}}$ electronic level of nitrogen molecules to the B $^3\Pi_{\mathrm{g}}$ one amounting to $Y_{[337]}=(6.05\pm 1.50)~$ MeV$^{-1}$ at 800 hPa pressure and 293 K temperature conditions, which compares well to previous dedicated works and to experimental results. Then, under the same pressure and temperature conditions, the fluorescence yield induced by molecular Bremsstrahlung radiation is found to be $Y_{[330-400]}^{\mathrm{MBR}}=0.10~$ MeV$^{-1}$ in the wavelength range of interest for the air-fluorescence detectors used to detect extensive air showers induced in the atmosphere by ultra-high energy cosmic rays. This means that out of $\simeq 175~$ photons with wavelength between 330 and 400 nm detected by fluorescence detectors, one of them has been produced by molecular Bremsstrahlung radiation. Although small, this contribution is not negligible in regards to the total budget of systematic uncertainties when considering the absolute energy scale of fluorescence detectors.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in Astropart. Phys. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1601.0055

An Estimate of the Spectral Intensity Expected from the Molecular Bremsstrahlung Radiation in Extensive Air Showers

A detection technique of ultra-high energy cosmic rays, complementary to the fluorescence technique, would be the use of the molecular Bremsstrahlung radiation emitted by low-energy electrons left after the passage of the showers in the atmosphere. The emission mechanism is expected from quasi-elastic collisions of electrons produced in the shower by the ionisation of the molecules in the atmosphere. In this article, a detailed calculation of the spectral intensity of photons at ground level originating from the transitions between unquantised energy states of free ionisation electrons is presented. In the absence of absorption of the emitted photons in the plasma, the obtained spectral intensity is shown to be 5 10^{-26} W m^{-2}Hz^{-1} at 10 km from the shower core for a vertical shower induced by a proton of 10^{17.5} eV.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figures, accepted in Astroparticle Physics. Compared to v1 version: 1. Inclusion of ro-vibrational processes. 2. Use of more accurate ionization potential values and energy distribution of the secondary electron

Molecular Bremsstrahlung Radiation at GHz Frequencies in Air

A detection technique for ultra-high energy cosmic rays, complementary to the fluorescence technique, would be the use of the molecular Bremsstrahlung radiation emitted by low-energy ionization electrons left after the passage of the showers in the atmosphere. In this article, a detailed estimate of the spectral intensity of photons at ground level originating from this radiation is presented. The spectral intensity expected from the passage of the high-energy electrons of the cascade is also estimated. The absorption of the photons in the plasma of electrons/neutral molecules is shown to be negligible. The obtained spectral intensity is shown to be $2\times10^{-21}$W cm$^{-2}$ GHz$^{-1}$ at 10 km from the shower core for a vertical shower induced by a proton of $10^{17.5}$ eV. In addition, a recent measurement of Bremsstrahlung radiation in air at gigahertz frequencies from a beam of electrons produced at 95 keV by an electron gun is also discussed and reasonably reproduced by the model.Comment: 20 pages, 9 figures, figures (2,4,7) improved in v2, accepted by Phys. Rev.

UHE tau neutrino flux regeneration while skimming the Earth

The detection of Earth-skimming tau neutrinos has turned into a very promising strategy for the observation of ultra-high energy cosmic neutrinos. The sensitivity of this channel crucially depends on the parameters of the propagation of the tau neutrinos through the terrestrial crust, which governs the flux of emerging tau leptons that can be detected. One of the characteristics of this propagation is the possibility of regeneration through multiple $\nu_\tau \leftrightarrow \tau$ conversions, which are often neglected in the standard picture. In this paper, we solve the transport equations governing the $\nu_\tau$ propagation and compare the flux of emerging tau leptons obtained allowing regeneration or not. We discuss the validity of the approximation of neglecting the $\nu_\tau$ regeneration using different scenarios for the neutrino-nucleon cross-sections and the tau energy losses.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figure