This article is cited in 4 papers

GRAVITY, ASTROPHYSICS

Possible galactic sources of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays and a strategy for their detection via gravitational lensing

A. Kusenko^ab, V. A. Kuz'min<sup>c

a</sup> Department of Physics and Astronomy, UCLA, Los Angeles
^b RIKEN BNL Research Center, Brookhaven National Laboratory
^c Institute for Nuclear Research, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow

Abstract: If decays of superheavy relic particles in the galactic halo are responsible for ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays, these particles must be clustered to account for small-scale anisotropy in the AGASA data. We show that the masses of such clusters are large enough for them to gravitationally lens stars and galaxies in the background. We propose a general strategy that can be used to detect such clusters via gravitational lensing, or to rule out the hypothesis of decaying relic particles as the origin of highest-energy cosmic rays.

PACS: 95.75.De, 98.70.Sa

Received: 28.03.2001

Language: English

 English version: Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics Letters, 2001, 73:9, 443–445

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