Search for Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays from Space -- The JEM-EUSO Program

Abstract

The origin and nature of Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECRs) remain unsolved in contemporary astroparticle physics. To give an answer to these questions is rather challenging because of the extremely low flux of a few per km 2 per century at extreme energies (i.e. E > 5×10 19 eV). The central objective of the JEM-EUSO program, Joint Experiment Missions for Extreme Universe Space Observatory, is the realisation of an ambitious space-based mission devoted to UHECR science. A super-wide-field telescope will look down from space onto the night sky to detect UV photons emitted from air showers generated by UHECRs in the atmosphere. The JEM-EUSO program includes several missions from ground (EUSO-TA), from stratospheric balloons (EUSO-Balloon, EUSO-SPB1, EUSO-SPB2), and from space (TUS, Mini-EUSO) employing fluorescence detectors to demonstrate the UHECR observation from space and prepare the large size missions K-EUSO and POEMMA. We review the scientifical objectives associated with the developing projects of the JEM-EUSO program and the technological achievements allowing them.

Polarization effects in cosmic-ray acceleration by cyclotron autoresonance

“…For about fifty years now, cosmicray particles carrying energies in excess of 10 18 eV have been seen by a number of detectors around the world. A substantial body of work, experimental and theoretical, has been dedicated to pinpointing their origin and explaining their enormous energies [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. CARA has recently been advanced [16,17] as a possible mechanism of acceleration for protons and heavier nuclei to ZeV energies, in an environment where radiation of wavelengths at the ends of a wide range coexist with megatesla (MT) to gigatesla (GT) uniform magnetic fields [18][19][20][21].…”