Diffraction and Low-Q^2 Physics Including Two-Photon Physics

Recent experimental results on the partonic structure of the photon and on the color singlet exchange in strong interaction processes are reviewed. At the LEP electron-positron and HERA lepton-proton colliders, complementary and consistent measurements have been achieved on the quark-gluon structure of quasi-real and virtual photons. At the HERA lepton-proton and Tevatron proton-antiproton colliders, the quark-gluon configuration of the diffractive exchange is consistently found to have a large gluon component. The rate of diffractive interactions observed by the HERA and Tevatron experiments, however, is largely different and challenges explanation (invited plenary talk at the XXIX International Conference on High Energy Physics, Vancouver, B.C. Canada (1998)).Comment: 36 pages (Latex), 35 figures (Postscript); in this replaced version the report on 'Structure Functions' by A.T.Doyle has been taken out and is available in hep-ex/981202

Investigation of the Galactic Magnetic Field with Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays

We present a method to correct for deflections of ultra-high energy cosmic rays in the galactic magnetic field. We perform these corrections by simulating the expected arrival directions of protons using a parameterization of the field derived from Faraday rotation and synchrotron emission measurements. To evaluate the method we introduce a simulated astrophysical scenario and two observables designed for testing cosmic ray deflections. We show that protons can be identified by taking advantage of the galactic magnetic field pattern. Consequently, cosmic ray deflection in the galactic field can be verified experimentally. The method also enables searches for directional correlations of cosmic rays with source candidates.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures, presented at the Eur. Phys. Soc. Conf. on High Energy Physics, Jul. 2015, Vienna, Austria, and the 34th Intern. Cosmic Ray Conf., Jul. 2015, The Hague, The Netherland

Detecting Local Deflection Patterns of Ultra-high Energy Cosmic Rays using the Principal Axes of the Directional Energy Distribution

From deflections in galactic and extragalactic magnetic fields energy dependent structures in the arrival directions of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECR) are expected. We propose to characterize these structures by the strength of collimation of energy along the principal axes in selected regions in the sky. While the strength of collimation are indicators of anisotropy in the arrival distribution of UHECR, the orientation of the principal system holds information about the direction of the deflections of UHECR. We discuss the method and present expected limits on the strength of deflection and density of sources using simulated scenarios of UHECR proton propagation.Comment: Contribution no. 1063 to the 33rd International Cosmic Ray Conference, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, July 201

The Nuclear Window to the Extragalactic Universe

We investigate two recent parameterizations of the galactic magnetic field with respect to their impact on cosmic nuclei traversing the field. We present a comprehensive study of the size of angular deflections, dispersion in the arrival probability distributions, multiplicity in the images of arrival on Earth, variance in field transparency, and influence of the turbulent field components. To remain restricted to ballistic deflections, a cosmic nucleus with energy E and charge Z should have a rigidity above E/Z=6 EV. In view of the differences resulting from the two field parameterizations as a measure of current knowledge in the galactic field, this rigidity threshold may have to be increased. For a point source search with E/Z>60 EV, field uncertainties increase the required signal events for discovery moderately for sources in the northern and southern regions, but substantially for sources near the galactic disk.Comment: 15 pages, 30 figures, few additional sentences and references as in accepted publicatio

Acceleration by Strong Interactions

Beyond the attractive strong potential needed for hadronic bound states, strong interactions are predicted to provide repulsive forces depending on the color charges involved. The repulsive interactions could in principle serve for particle acceleration with highest gradients in the order of GeV/fm. Indirect evidence for repulsive interactions have been reported in the context of heavy meson production at colliders. In this contribution, we sketch a thought experiment to directly investigate repulsive strong interactions. For this we prepare two quarks using two simultaneous deep inelastic scattering processes off an iron target. We discuss the principle setup of the experiment and estimate the number of electrons on target required to observe a repulsive effect between the quarks.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figure

Origins of Extragalactic Cosmic Ray Nuclei by Contracting Alignment Patterns induced in the Galactic Magnetic Field

We present a novel approach to search for origins of ultra-high energy cosmic rays. These particles are likely nuclei that initiate extensive air showers in the Earth's atmosphere. In large-area observatories, the particle arrival directions are measured together with their energies and the atmospheric depth at which their showers maximize. The depths provide rough measures of the nuclear charges. In a simultaneous fit to all observed cosmic rays we use the galactic magnetic field as a mass spectrometer and adapt the nuclear charges such that their extragalactic arrival directions are concentrated in as few directions as possible. Using different simulated examples we show that, with the measurements on Earth, reconstruction of extragalactic source directions is possible. In particular, we show in an astrophysical scenario that source directions can be reconstructed even within a substantial isotropic background.Comment: 14 pages, 15 figure