Extensive Air Showers from Ultra High Energy Gluinos

Abstract

We study the proposal that the cosmic ray primaries above the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin (GZK) cutoff are gluino-containing hadrons ($\tilde{g}$-hadrons). We describe the interaction of $\tilde{g}$-hadrons with nucleons in the framework of the Gribov-Regge approach using a modified version of the hadronic interaction model QGSJET for the generations of Extensive Air Showers (EAS). There are two mass windows marginally allowed for gluinos: $m_{\tilde g}\lsim 3$ GeV and $25\lsim m_{\tilde g}\lsim 35$ GeV. Gluino-containing hadrons corresponding to the second window produce EAS very different from the observed ones. Light $\tilde{g}$-hadrons corresponding to the first gluino window produce EAS similar to those initiated by protons, and only future detectors can marginally distinguish them. We propose a beam-dump accelerator experiment to search for $\tilde{g}$-hadrons in this mass window. We emphasize the importance of this experiment: it can discover (or exclude) the light gluino and its role as a cosmic ray primary at ultra high energies.

27 pages latex, 13 eps figures

References in corpus (14)

• Probing The Structure of Space-Time with Cosmic Rays
• Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays: The theoretical challenge
• Extra dimensions and Strong Neutrino-Nucleon interactions above $10^{19}$ eV : Breaking the GZK Barrier
• Acceleration of Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays
• Statistics of clustering of ultra-high energy cosmic rays and the number of their sources
• Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays from Compact Sources
• Unstable superheavy relic particles as a source of neutrinos responsible for the ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays
• The GZK Feature in our Neighborhood of the Universe
• An analysis of a Heavy Gluino LSP at CDF : The Heavy Gluino Window
• Can Gamma Ray Bursts Produce the Observed Cosmic Rays Above $10^{20}$ eV?
• Testing the Correlation of Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays with High Redshift Sources
• Ultra-high energy cosmic rays may come from clustered sources
• Light Gluino Search for Decays Containing pi+pi- or pi0 from a Neutral Hadron Beam at Fermilab
• The Mysterious Ultrahigh Energy Cosmic Ray Clustering

Cited by in corpus (19)

• Dark Matter and Background Light
• Astrophysical Origins of Ultrahigh Energy Cosmic Rays
• Ultrahigh Energy Cosmic Rays: The state of the art before the Auger Observatory
• Ultra-High Energy Neutrino Fluxes: New Constraints and Implications
• Signatures of long-lived gluinos in split supersymmetry
• Fragmentation functions in SUSY QCD and UHECR spectra produced in top-down models
• Evidence for a connection between the gamma-ray and the highest energy cosmic-ray emissions by BL Lacertae objects
• Probing Split Supersymmetry with Cosmic Rays
• Super Heavy Dark Matter and UHECR Anisotropy at Low Energy
• New hadrons as ultra-high energy cosmic rays
• Cosmic UHE Neutrino Signatures
• New physics from ultrahigh energy cosmic rays
• Is astronomy possible with neutral ultra-high energy cosmic ray particles existing in the Standard Model?
• Gluino Air Showers as a Signal of Split Supersymmetry
• Detection of Exotic Massive Hadrons in Ultra High Energy Cosmic Ray Telescopes
• SUSY Resonances from UHE neutralinos in Neutrino Telescopes and in the Sky
• Deep shower interpretation of the cosmic ray events observed in excess of the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin energy
• Ultrahigh Energy Cosmic Rays: New Physics or Old Physics?
• The Mysteries of the Highest Energy Cosmic Rays