Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays: The Annihilation of Super-Heavy Relics

The detection of byproducts from particle annihilations in galactic halos would provide important information about the nature of the dark matter. Observational evidence for a local excess of high-energy positrons has motivated recent models with an additional interaction between dark matter particles that can result in a Sommerfeld enhancement to the cross section for annihilation. In such models, the cross section becomes velocity-dependent and may enhance the dark matter a...

We present a brief introduction to the physics of Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECRs), concentrating on the experimental results obtained so far and on what, from these results, can be inferred about the sources of UHECRs.

Annihilation of high energy, $\sim 10^{21}$eV, neutrinos on big bang relic neutrinos of $\sim 1$eV mass, clustered in the Galactic halo or in a nearby galaxy cluster halo, has been suggested to generate, through hadronic Z decay, high energy nucleons and photons which may account for the detected flux of >10^{20}eV cosmic-rays. We show that the flux of high energy nucleons and photons produced by this process is dominated by annihilation on the uniform, non-clustered, neutr...

The lack of a high energy cutoff in the cosmic ray spectrum together with an apparently isotropic distribution of arrival directions for the highest energy events have strongly constrained most models proposed for the generation of these particles. An overview of the theoretical proposals are presented along with their most general signatures. Future experimental tests of the different proposals are discussed.

The inner region of the Milky Way halo harbors a large amount of dark matter (DM). Given its proximity, it is one of the most promising targets to look for DM. We report on a search for the annihilations of DM particles using $\gamma$-ray observations towards the inner 300 parsecs of the Milky Way, with the H.E.S.S. array of ground-based Cherenkov telescopes. The analysis is based on a 2D maximum likelihood method using Galactic center (GC) data accumulated by H.E.S.S. over t...

Since 1990's the detection of extremely energetic air showers and precise astronomical measurements have proved that our knowledge about fundamental laws of Nature is far from being complete. These observations have found convincing evidences against two popular believes: The spectrum of Cosmic Rays would have a steep cutoff at energies around $10^{19}eV$ (GZK cutoff) and the contravortial quantity called Cosmological Constant (dark energy) should be strictly zero. They have ...

We propose a formula for flux of extremely high energy cosmic rays (EHECR) through decay of superheavy particles. It is shown that EHECR spectrum reported by AGASA is reproduced by the formula. The presence of EHECR suggests, according to this approach, the existence of superheavy particles with mass of about $7 \times 10^{11}$GeV and the lifetime of about $10^9$ years. Possibility to obtain a knowledge of $\Omega_0$ of the universe from the spectrum of EHECR is also poin...

Cosmological N-body simulations show that Milky-Way-sized galaxies harbor a population of unmerged dark matter subhalos. These subhalos could shine in gamma rays and be eventually detected in gamma-ray surveys as unidentified sources. We search for very-high-energy (VHE, $E\geq 100$ GeV) gamma-ray emission using H.E.S.S. observations carried out from a thorough selection of unidentified Fermi-LAT Objects (UFOs) as dark matter subhalo candidates. Provided that the dark matter ...

The possibility that the Fermi scale is the only fundamental energy scale of Nature is under serious consideration at present, yet cosmic rays may already have provided direct evidence of new physics at a much higher scale. The recent detection of very high energy particles with no plausible astrophysical sources suggests that these originate from the slow decays of massive particles clustered in the halo of our Galaxy. Such particles had in fact been predicted to exist befor...

We reanalyse the prospects for upcoming Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Ray experiments in connection with the phenomenology of Super-heavy Dark Matter. We identify a set of observables well suited to reveal a possible anisotropy in the High Energy Cosmic Ray flux induced by the decays of these particles, and quantify their performance via Monte Carlo simulations that mimic the outcome of near-future and next-generation experiments. The spherical and circular dipoles are able to tel...