New physics from ultrahigh energy cosmic rays

Abstract

Cosmic rays from outer space enter the atmosphere with energies of up to 10^{11} GeV. The initial particle or a secondary hadron inside the shower may then interact with an air nucleon to produce nonstandard particles. In this article we study the production of new physics by high energy cosmic rays, focusing on the long-lived gluino of split-SUSY models and a WIMP working as dark matter. We first deduce the total flux of hadron events at any depth in the atmosphere, showing that secondary hadrons can not be neglected. Then we use these results to find the flux of gluinos and WIMPs that reach the ground after being produced inside air showers. We also evaluate the probability of producing these exotic particles in a single proton shower of ultrahigh energy. Finally we discuss the possible signal in current and projected experiments. While the tiny flux of WIMPs does not seem to have any phenomenological consequences, we show that the gluinos could modify substantially the profile of a small fraction of extensive air showers. In particular, they could produce a distinct signal observable at AUGER in showers of large zenith angle.

9 pages, version to appear in PRD

References in corpus (28)

• First Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Determination of Cosmological Parameters
• Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (in "The Review of Particle Properties" 2004)
• Particle Dark Matter: Evidence, Candidates and Constraints
• First Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Preliminary Maps and Basic Results
• The Cosmological Parameters 2006
• Big-Bang nucleosynthesis (Particle Data Group mini-review)
• Supersymmetric Unification Without Low Energy Supersymmetry And Signatures for Fine-Tuning at the LHC
• Sensitivity of the IceCube Detector to Astrophysical Sources of High Energy Muon Neutrinos
• Signatures of long-lived gluinos in split supersymmetry
• Interactions of Heavy Stable Hadronizing Particles
• Black Holes at Neutrino Telescopes
• Neutrino Telescopes as a Direct Probe of Supersymmetry Breaking
• On Black Hole Detection with the OWL/Airwatch Telescope
• Search for squarks and gluinos in events with jets and missing transverse energy in ppbar collisions at sqrt(s)=1.96 TeV
• Exotic Neutrino Interactions at the Pierre Auger Observatory
• Direct Detection of Supersymmetric Particles in Neutrino Telescopes
• Probing Split Supersymmetry with Cosmic Rays
• IceHEP High Energy Physics at the South Pole
• Electroweak instantons as a solution to the ultrahigh energy cosmic ray puzzle
• Cosmic Ray Signals from Mini Black Holes in Models with Extra Dimensions: An Analytical/Monte Carlo Study
• TeV gravity at neutrino telescopes
• Long-Lived Staus at Neutrino Telescopes
• The Particle Physics Reach of High-Energy Neutrino Astronomy
• Cosmogenic neutrinos and signals of TeV gravity in air showers and neutrino telescopes
• Weak interactions of supersymmetric staus at high energies
• Cosmic rays at ultra high energies (Neutrinos!)
• Higgsino dark matter in partly supersymmetric models
• Gluino Air Showers as a Signal of Split Supersymmetry

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Cosmic ray air showers from sphalerons
• Probing RS scenarios of flavour at LHC via leptonic channels
• Probing new physics with long-lived charged particles produced by atmospheric and astrophysical neutrinos
• Long-lived Staus from Cosmic Rays
• Atmospheric lepton fluxes at ultrahigh energies
• Detecting light long-lived particle produced by cosmic ray
• Hunting long-lived gluinos at the Pierre Auger Observatory
• Propagation in the atmosphere of ultrahigh-energy charmed hadrons
• Constraining strongly coupled new physics from cosmic rays with machine learning techniques