Evading the GZK Cosmic-Ray Cutoff

Abstract

Explanations of the origin of ultra-high energy cosmic rays are severely constrained by the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuz'min effect, which limits their propagation over cosmological distances. We argue that possible departures from strict Lorentz invariance, too small to have been detected otherwise, can affect elementary-particle kinematics so as to suppress or forbid inelastic collisions of cosmic-ray nucleons with background photons. Thereby can the GZK cutoff be relaxed or removed.

6 pages, harvmac

Cited by in corpus (13)

• Modern tests of Lorentz invariance
• Tests of Lorentz invariance: a 2013 update
• Synchrotron Radiation from the Crab Nebula Discriminates between Models of Space-Time Foam
• Bare and Induced Lorentz and CPT Invariance Violations in QED
• The Glashow resonance as a discriminator of UHE cosmic neutrinos originating from p-gamma and p-p collisions
• Quantum Gravity Phenomenology and Lorentz Violation
• On the cross correlation between the arrival direction of ultra-high energy cosmic rays, BL Lacertae, and EGRET detections: A new way to identify EGRET sources?
• Neutrino telescope modelling of Lorentz invariance violation in oscillations of atmospheric neutrinos
• On the History of Geometrization of Space-time: From Minkowski to Finsler Geometry
• Local Lorentz Transformation and "Lorentz Violation"
• High-Energy Astrophysics and Cosmology
• Prospects for discovery of physics beyond the Standard Model at the Pierre Auger Observatory
• The GZK Bound in Discrete Space