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Universe
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Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays
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Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays

A special issue of Universe (ISSN 2218-1997). This special issue belongs to the section "High Energy Nuclear and Particle Physics".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (1 April 2025) | Viewed by 3799

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Haoning He

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Key Laboratory of Dark Matter and Space Astronomy, Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210033, China
Interests: high-energy neutrinos; ultra-high energy cosmic rays; high energy phenomena in the Universe

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) are particles from the Universe with energies above 1 EeV (1018 eV),extending up to beyond 100 EeV. These energies are much higher than those achieved by human-made accelerators. Such high energy particles, subsequently, are important probes to study acceleration physics, particle physics, and new physics beyond the standard models. However, how and where those particles are accelerated to such high energies still remains a mystery, even 60 years after they were discovered. As UHECRs travel to Earth, their paths are altered by magnetic fields, causing the observed UHECR directions to deviate from the directions of their sources. This discrepancy presents a challenge in pinpointing the origins of these cosmic rays. Decades of experimental and theoretical work have been dedicated to exploring this phenomenon. The world’s largest UHECR observatories, the Pierre Auger Observatory (PAO) and the Telescope Array (TA) experiments, have been measuring the spectrum, composition, and anisotropy of UHECRs for over a decade, providing us with more and more information to uncover the origin and acceleration mechanism of UHECRs. The development of next-generation experiments, such as the Giant Radio Array for Neutrino Detection (GRAND) project and the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), would further increase the statistics of observed UHECRs. Furthermore, the progress in multi-messenger astronomy enriches our knowledge further on features of source candidates, the extra-galactic background light, and the intergalactic and galactic magnetic field, developing our understanding of the acceleration and escape of UHECRs in the source, and their propagation from the source to Earth. This marks an exciting time, bringing us closer to understanding this scientific marvel.

The aim of this Special Issue is to collect the current knowledge from theories and observations on the physics of UHECRs and their source candidates, understanding our position in relation to, and what kind of efforts are needed to solve, this 60-year-old mystery.

Dr. Haoning He
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Universe is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • high energy neutrino
  • high energy gamma-ray
  • ultra-high-energy cosmic rays
  • particle acceleration
  • hadronic interactions
  • anisotropy
  • composition
  • multi-messenger astronomy
  • magnetic fields
  • Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs)
  • galaxy clusters
  • Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN)
  • Tidal Disruption Events (TDEs)
  • radio galaxies
  • starburst galaxies
  • pulsars

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Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

12 pages, 2754 KiB  
Article
μPPET: Investigating the Muon Puzzle with J-PET Detectors
by Alessio Porcelli, Kavya Valsan Eliyan, Gabriel Moskal, Nousaba Nasrin Protiti, Diana Laura Sirghi, Ermias Yitayew Beyene, Neha Chug, Catalina Curceanu, Eryk Czerwiński, Manish Das, Marek Gorgol, Jakub Hajduga, Sharareh Jalali, Bożena Jasińska, Krzysztof Kacprzak, Tevfik Kaplanoglu, Łukasz Kapłon, Kamila Kasperska, Aleksander Khreptak, Grzegorz Korcyl, Tomasz Kozik, Deepak Kumar, Karol Kubat, Edward Lisowski, Filip Lisowski, Justyna Mędrala-Sowa, Wiktor Mryka, Simbarashe Moyo, Szymon Niedźwiecki, Szymon Parzych, Piyush Pandey, Elena Perez del Rio, Bartłomiej Rachwał, Martin Rädler, Sushil Sharma, Magdalena Skurzok, Ewa Łucja Stȩpień, Tomasz Szumlak, Pooja Tanty, Keyvan Tayefi Ardebili, Satyam Tiwari and Paweł Moskaladd Show full author list remove Hide full author list
Universe 2025, 11(6), 180; https://doi.org/10.3390/universe11060180 - 2 Jun 2025
Viewed by 343
Abstract
The μPPET [mu(μ)on Probe with J-PET] project aims to investigate the “Muon Puzzle” seen in cosmic ray air showers. This puzzle arises from the observation of a significantly larger number of muons on Earth’s surface than that predicted by the [...] Read more.
The μPPET [mu(μ)on Probe with J-PET] project aims to investigate the “Muon Puzzle” seen in cosmic ray air showers. This puzzle arises from the observation of a significantly larger number of muons on Earth’s surface than that predicted by the current theoretical models. The investigated hypothesis is based on recently observed asymmetries in the parameters for the strong interaction cross-section and trajectory of an outgoing particle due to projectile–target polarization. The measurements require detailed information about muons at the ground level, including their track and charge distributions. To achieve this, the two PET scanners developed at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow (Poland), the J-PET detectors, will be employed, taking advantage of their well-known resolution and convenient location for detecting muons that reach long depths in the atmosphere. One station will be used as a muon tracker, while the second will reconstruct the core of the air shower. In parallel, the existing hadronic interaction models will be modified and fine-tuned based on the experimental results. In this work, we present the conceptualization and preliminary designs of μPPET. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays)
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11 pages, 1319 KiB  
Article
The Multimessenger Contribution of Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays from Gamma-Ray Bursts
by Zhenjiang Li, Fangsheng Min, Yi Jin and Yiqing Guo
Universe 2025, 11(1), 22; https://doi.org/10.3390/universe11010022 - 15 Jan 2025
Viewed by 838
Abstract
It has long been debated whether gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) could serve as potential sources of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs). In this study, we consider GRBs as sources of UHECR injection with an injection index of α=2 and propagate them through the [...] Read more.
It has long been debated whether gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) could serve as potential sources of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs). In this study, we consider GRBs as sources of UHECR injection with an injection index of α=2 and propagate them through the extragalactic magnetic field within the framework of CRPropa 3. The baryon loading factor fCR is taken into account to quantify the rate of UHECR energy injection. In the benchmark case with a jet opening angle of θj=1 and fCR=1, we find that both high- and low-luminosity populations contribute to less than 10% of the UHECR spectrum. The most constrained scenario suggests fCR≤15, indicating that GRBs are less efficient in producing the all-sky UHECR intensity. The high-energy diffuse neutrinos and gamma rays resulting from interactions between UHECRs from GRBs and extragalactic background photons do not dominate the observations of Fermi-LAT or IceCube. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays)
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12 pages, 4926 KiB  
Article
Radio Detection of UHE Cosmic Rays and Neutrinos off the Moon with Two 30 m Telescopes
by Linjie Chen, Jianli Zhang, Lihong Geng and Lingmei Cheng
Universe 2025, 11(1), 7; https://doi.org/10.3390/universe11010007 - 28 Dec 2024
Viewed by 636
Abstract
Due to the Askaryan effect, radio emissions will be produced when ultra-high-energy (UHE) cosmic rays and neutrinos impact the lunar regolith. Many experiments have been proposed and performed to detect such radio emissions from the lunar regolith. However, none of the Cherenkov radio [...] Read more.
Due to the Askaryan effect, radio emissions will be produced when ultra-high-energy (UHE) cosmic rays and neutrinos impact the lunar regolith. Many experiments have been proposed and performed to detect such radio emissions from the lunar regolith. However, none of the Cherenkov radio signals has been detected in these experiments up to now. In order to improve the detectability of the UHE particles, we proposed an experiment to carry out the radio observations of the UHE cosmic rays and neutrinos with two 30 m telescopes for a far longer time than the present experiments. The expected sensitivity for the detection of such UHE particles has been calculated, both for cosmic rays and neutrinos. The results show that a few UHE particle events above 1020 eV could be detected with the expected observation time of several thousand hours. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays)
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10 pages, 3054 KiB  
Article
First Results of the CREDO-Maze Cosmic Ray Project
by Tadeusz Wibig, Michał Karbowiak, Punsiri Dam-O, Karol Jȩdrzejczak, Jari Joutsenvaara, Julia Puputti, Juha Sorri and Ari-Pekka Leppänen
Universe 2024, 10(9), 346; https://doi.org/10.3390/universe10090346 - 28 Aug 2024
Viewed by 967
Abstract
The CREDO-Maze project is the concept for a network of stations recording local, extensive cosmic ray air showers. Each station consists of four small scintillation detectors and a control unit that monitors the cosmic ray flux 24 h a day and transmits the [...] Read more.
The CREDO-Maze project is the concept for a network of stations recording local, extensive cosmic ray air showers. Each station consists of four small scintillation detectors and a control unit that monitors the cosmic ray flux 24 h a day and transmits the results to the central server. The modular design of each array allows the results to be used in educational classes on nuclear radiation, relativistic physics, and particle physics and as a teaching aid in regular school classrooms and more. As an example, we present here some preliminary results from the CREDO-Maze muon telescope missions to the Arctic and down into a deep salt mine, as well as the first shower-particle correlation measurements from a table-top experiment at Walailak University. These experiments show that the different geometric configurations of the CREDO-Maze detector set can be used for projects beyond the scope of the secondary school curriculum, and they can form the basis of student theses and dissertations at universities. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays)
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