Generation of 10^15 - 10^17 eV photons by UHE CR in the Galactic magnetic filed

We show that the deep expected in the diffuse photon spectrum above the threshold of e+e- pair production, i.e., at energies 10^15 - 10^17 eV, may be absent due to the synchrotron radiation by the electron component of the extragalactic Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHE CR) in the Galactic magnetic filed. The mechanism we propose requires small (less than 2x10^-12 G) extragalactic magnetic fields and large fraction of photons in the UHE CR. For a typical photon flux expected in top-down scenarios of UHE CR, the predicted flux in the region of the deep is close to the existing experimental limit. The sensitivity of our mechanism to the extragalactic magnetic field may be used to improve existing bounds on the latter by two orders of magnitude.Comment: 11 pages, LaTeX, 1 .ps figure. Numerical error corrected; references adde

Bulk and local magnetic susceptibility of ErB12

High precision measurements of magnetoresistance Δρ/ρ = f(T,H) and magnetization M(T,H) were carried out on single crystals of rare-earth dodecaboride $ErB_{12}$ at temperatures in the interval 1.8-30 K in magnetic fields up to 70 kOe. The high accuracy of the experiments allowed us to perform numerical differentiation and analyze quantitatively the behavior of the derivative d(Δρ/ρ)/dH = f(T,H) and of the magnetic susceptibility χ(T,H) = dM/dH in paramagnetic and magnetically ordered (antiferromagnetic, $T_N$ ≈ 6.7 K and $T_M$ ≈ 5.85 K) phases of $ErB_{12}$. It was shown that negative magnetoresistance anomalies observed in present study in paramagnetic state of $ErB_{12}$ may be consistently interpreted in the framework of a simple relation between resistivity and magnetization -Δρ/ρ ~ $M^2$

Upper limit on the ultra-high-energy photon flux from AGASA and Yakutsk data

We present the interpretation of the muon and scintillation signals of ultra-high-energy air showers observed by AGASA and Yakutsk extensive air shower array experiments. We consider case-by-case ten highest energy events with known muon content and conclude that at the 95% confidence level (C.L.) none of them was induced by a primary photon. Taking into account statistical fluctuations and differences in the energy estimation of proton and photon primaries, we derive an upper limit of 36% at 95% C.L. on the fraction of primary photons in the cosmic-ray flux above 10^20 eV. This result disfavors the Z-burst and superheavy dark-matter solutions to the GZK-cutoff problem.Comment: revtex, 8 pages, 4 figure