Search arXiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 0804.2633

Prospects for direct cosmic ray mass measurements through the Gerasimova-Zatsepin effect

S. Lafèbre·H. Falcke·J. Hörandel·J. Kuijpers
View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

The Solar radiation field may break apart ultra high energy cosmic nuclei, after which both remnants will be deflected in the interplanetary magnetic field in different ways. This process is known as the Gerasimova-Zatsepin effect after its discoverers. We investigate the possibility of using the detection of the separated air showers produced by a pair of remnant particles as a way to identify the species of the original cosmic ray primary directly. Event rates for current and proposed detectors are estimated, and requirements are defined for ideal detectors of this phenomenon. Detailed computational models of the disintegration and deflection processes for a wide range of cosmic ray primaries in the energy range of 10^16 to 10^20 eV are combined with sophisticated detector models to calculate realistic detection rates. The fraction of Gerasimova-Zatsepin events is found to be of the order of 10^-5 of the cosmic ray flux, implying an intrinsic event rate of around 0.07 km^-2 sr^-1 yr^-1 in the energy range defined. Event rates in any real experiment, however, existing or under construction, will probably not exceed 10^-2 yr^-1.

Explore related subjects

astro-ph

Keep this discovery

BibTeXRIS

S. Lafèbre, H. Falcke, J. Hörandel, J. Kuijpers. 2008-04-16. Prospects for direct cosmic ray mass measurements through the Gerasimova-Zatsepin effect. https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361:200809468

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2009

An implementation of radiative transfer in the cosmological simulation code GADGET

We present a novel numerical implementation of radiative transfer in the cosmological smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulation code {\small GADGET}. It is based on a fast, robust and photon-conserving integration scheme where the radiation transport problem is approximated in terms of moments of the transfer equation and by using a variable Eddington tensor as a closure relation, following the `OTVET'-suggestion of Gnedin & Abel. We derive a suitable anisotropic diffusion operator for use in the SPH discretization of the local photon transport, and we combine this with an implicit solver that guarantees robustness and photon conservation. This entails a matrix inversion problem of a huge, sparsely populated matrix that is distributed in memory in our parallel code. We solve this task iteratively with a conjugate gradient scheme. Finally, to model photon sink processes we consider ionisation and recombination processes of hydrogen, which is represented with a chemical network that is evolved with an implicit time integration scheme. We present several tests of our implementation, including single and multiple sources in static uniform density fields with and without temperature evolution, shadowing by a dense clump, and multiple sources in a static cosmological density field. All tests agree quite well with analytical computations or with predictions from other radiative transfer codes, except for shadowing. However, unlike most other radiative transfer codes presently in use for studying reionisation, our new method can be used on-the-fly during dynamical cosmological simulation, allowing simultaneous treatments of galaxy formation and the reionisation process of the Universe.

astro-ph↗
arXiv2009

Modification from Noncommutative Inflation

We explore the noncommutative effect on single field inflation and compare with WMAP five-year data. First, we calculate the noncommutative effect from the potential and dynamical terms, and construct the general form of modified power spectrum. Second, we consider the leading order modification of slow-roll, DBI and K-inflation and unite the modification, which means the modification is nearly model independent at this level. Finally, comparing with the WMAP5 data, we find that the modified can be well realized as the origin of the relative large spectral index and the quite small running.

astro-ph↗