Possible galactic sources of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays and a strategy for their detection via gravitational lensing
A. Kusenko+*, V. A. Kuzmin
+Department of Physics and Astronomy, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1547, USA *RIKEN BNL Research Center, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY 11973, USA Institute for Nuclear Research RAS, 117312 Moscow, Russia
PACS: 95.75.De, 98.70.Sa
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.
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