Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays in a Structured and Magnetized Universe

We simulate propagation of cosmic ray nucleons above 10^{19} eV in scenarios where both the source distribution and magnetic fields within about 50 Mpc from us are obtained from an unconstrained large scale structure simulation. We find that consistency of predicted sky distributions with current data above 4 x 10^{19} eV requires magnetic fields of ~0.1 microGauss in our immediate environment, and a nearby source density of ~10^{-4}-10^{-3} Mpc^{-3}. Radio galaxies could provide the required sources, but only if both high and low-luminosity radio galaxies are very efficient cosmic ray accelerators. Moreover, at ~10^{19} eV an additional isotropic flux component, presumably of cosmological origin, should dominate over the local flux component by about a factor three in order to explain the observed isotropy. This argues against the scenario in which local astrophysical sources of cosmic rays above ~10^{19} eV reside in strongly magnetized (B~0.1 microGauss) and structured intergalactic medium. Finally we discuss how future large scale full-sky detectors such as the Pierre Auger project will allow to put much more stringent constraints on source and magnetic field distributions.Comment: 11 revtex pages, 10 postscript figures included, final version to appear in PR

Anisotropy at the end of the cosmic ray spectrum?

The starburst galaxies M82 and NGC253 have been proposed as the primary sources of cosmic rays with energies above $10^{18.7}$ eV. For energies \agt 10^{20.3} eV the model predicts strong anisotropies. We calculate the probabilities that the latter can be due to chance occurrence. For the highest energy cosmic ray events in this energy region, we find that the observed directionality has less than 1% probability of occurring due to random fluctuations. Moreover, during the first 5 years of operation at Auger, the observation of even half the predicted anisotropy has a probability of less than $10^{-5}$ to occur by chance fluctuation. Thus, this model can be subject to test at very small cost to the Auger priors budget and, whatever the outcome of that test, valuable information on the Galactic magnetic field will be obtained.Comment: Final version to be published in Physical Review

Astrophysical Origins of Ultrahigh Energy Cosmic Rays

In the first part of this review we discuss the basic observational features at the end of the cosmic ray energy spectrum. We also present there the main characteristics of each of the experiments involved in the detection of these particles. We then briefly discuss the status of the chemical composition and the distribution of arrival directions of cosmic rays. After that, we examine the energy losses during propagation, introducing the Greisen-Zaptsepin-Kuzmin (GZK) cutoff, and discuss the level of confidence with which each experiment have detected particles beyond the GZK energy limit. In the second part of the review, we discuss astrophysical environments able to accelerate particles up to such high energies, including active galactic nuclei, large scale galactic wind termination shocks, relativistic jets and hot-spots of Fanaroff-Riley radiogalaxies, pulsars, magnetars, quasar remnants, starbursts, colliding galaxies, and gamma ray burst fireballs. In the third part of the review we provide a brief summary of scenarios which try to explain the super-GZK events with the help of new physics beyond the standard model. In the last section, we give an overview on neutrino telescopes and existing limits on the energy spectrum and discuss some of the prospects for a new (multi-particle) astronomy. Finally, we outline how extraterrestrial neutrino fluxes can be used to probe new physics beyond the electroweak scale.Comment: Higher resolution version of Fig. 7 is available at http://www.angelfire.com/id/dtorres/down3.html. Solicited review article prepared for Reports on Progress in Physics, final versio