Cosmic Rays from PeV to ZeV, Stellar Evolution, Supernova Physics and Gamma Ray Bursts

The recent success of a proposal from some time ago to explain the spectrum of cosmic rays allows some strong conclusions to be made on the physics of supernovae: In the context of this specific proposal to explain the origin of cosmic rays, the mechanism for exploding supernovae of high mass has to be the one proposed by Bisnovatyi-Kogan more than 30 years ago, which was then based on a broader suggestion by Kardashev: A combination of the effects of rotation and magnetic fields explodes the star. Interestingly, this step then leads inevitably to some further suggestions, useful perhaps for the study of gamma ray bursts and the search of a bright standard candle in cosmology

Measurement of the quasi-elastic axial vector mass in neutrino-oxygen interactions

The weak nucleon axial-vector form factor for quasi-elastic interactions is determined using neutrino interaction data from the K2K Scintillating Fiber detector in the neutrino beam at KEK. More than 12,000 events are analyzed, of which half are charged-current quasi-elastic interactions nu-mu n to mu- p occurring primarily in oxygen nuclei. We use a relativistic Fermi gas model for oxygen and assume the form factor is approximately a dipole with one parameter, the axial vector mass M_A, and fit to the shape of the distribution of the square of the momentum transfer from the nucleon to the nucleus. Our best fit result for M_A = 1.20 \pm 0.12 GeV. Furthermore, this analysis includes updated vector form factors from recent electron scattering experiments and a discussion of the effects of the nucleon momentum on the shape of the fitted distributions.Comment: 14 pages, 10 figures, 6 table

Massless geodesics in AdS5×Y(p,q)AdS_5\times Y(p,q) as a superintegrable system

A Carter like constant for the geodesic motion in the $Y(p,q)$ Einstein-Sasaki geometries is presented. This constant is functionally independent with respect to the five known constants for the geometry. Since the geometry is five dimensional and the number of independent constants of motion is at least six, the geodesic equations are superintegrable. We point out that this result applies to the configuration of massless geodesic in $AdS_5\times Y(p,q)$ studied by Benvenuti and Kruczenski, which are matched to long BPS operators in the dual N=1 supersymmetric gauge theory.Comment: 20 pages, no figures. Small misprint is corrected in the Killing-Yano tensor. No change in any result or conclusion