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Concept
Ultra-high-energy cosmic ray
Summary
In astroparticle physics, an ultra-high-energy cosmic ray (UHECR) is a cosmic ray with an energy greater than 1 EeV (1018 electronvolts, approximately 0.16 joules), far beyond both the rest mass and energies typical of other cosmic ray particles.
These particles are extremely rare; between 2004 and 2007, the initial runs of the Pierre Auger Observatory (PAO) detected 27 events with estimated arrival energies above 5.7e19eV, that is, about one such event every four weeks in the 3000 km2 area surveyed by the observatory.
An extreme-energy cosmic ray (EECR) is an UHECR with energy exceeding 5e19eV (about 8 joule, or the energy of a proton traveling at ≈ 99.99999999999999999998% the speed of light), the so-called Greisen–Zatsepin–Kuzmin limit (GZK limit). This limit should be the maximum energy of cosmic ray protons that have traveled long distances (about 160 million light years), since higher-energy protons would have lost energy over that distance due to scattering from photons in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). It follows that EECR could not be survivors from the early universe, but are cosmologically "young", emitted somewhere in the Local Supercluster by some unknown physical process.
If an EECR is not a proton, but a nucleus with A nucleons, then the GZK limit applies to its nucleons, which carry only a fraction 1/A of the total energy of the nucleus. There is evidence that these highest-energy cosmic rays might be iron nuclei, rather than the protons that make up most cosmic rays.
For an iron nucleus, the corresponding limit would be 2.8e21eV. However, nuclear physics processes lead to limits for iron nuclei similar to that of protons. Other abundant nuclei should have even lower limits.
The hypothetical sources of EECR are known as Zevatrons, named in analogy to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Bevatron and Fermilab's Tevatron, and therefore capable of accelerating particles to 1 ZeV (1021 eV, zetta-electronvolt).
Official source
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