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Origin of the ankle in the ultra-high energy cosmic ray spectrum and of the extragalactic protons below it

3 Pith papers cite this work. Polarity classification is still indexing.

3 Pith papers citing it
abstract

The sharp change in slope of the ultrahigh energy cosmic ray (UHECR) spectrum around 10^18.6 eV (the ankle), combined with evidence of a light but extragalactic component near and below the ankle and intermediate composition above, has proved exceedingly challenging to understand theoretically, without fine-tuning. We propose a mechanism whereby photo-disintegration of ultrahigh energy nuclei in the region surrounding a UHECR accelerator accounts for the observed spectrum and inferred composition at Earth. For suitable source conditions, the model reproduces the spectrum and the composition over the entire extragalactic cosmic ray energy range, i.e. above 10^17.5 eV. Predictions for the spectrum and flavors of neutrinos resulting from this process are also presented.

years

2026 2 2024 1

verdicts

UNVERDICTED 3

representative citing papers

Ultraheavy Ultrahigh-Energy Cosmic Rays

astro-ph.HE · 2024-05-27 · unverdicted · novelty 7.0

Ultraheavy nuclei have longer energy loss lengths at ≲300 EeV than lighter nuclei, allowing them to explain UHECRs above 100 EeV from sources like collapsars and neutron star mergers while predicting distinct shower maxima.

TeV-PeV Gamma-ray and Neutrino Emission in the Galactic Plane

astro-ph.HE · 2026-06-22 · unverdicted · novelty 3.0

Alternative ISRF models produce only modest changes to the LHAASO diffuse gamma-ray fit; the associated pp neutrinos remain consistent with IceCube all-sky data and compatible with ANTARES/KM3NeT limits.

citing papers explorer

Showing 3 of 3 citing papers.

  • Ultraheavy Ultrahigh-Energy Cosmic Rays astro-ph.HE · 2024-05-27 · unverdicted · none · ref 101 · internal anchor

    Ultraheavy nuclei have longer energy loss lengths at ≲300 EeV than lighter nuclei, allowing them to explain UHECRs above 100 EeV from sources like collapsars and neutron star mergers while predicting distinct shower maxima.

  • Nuclei in high-energy neutrino sources: A multimessenger study of in-source propagation hep-ph · 2026-06-22 · unverdicted · none · ref 22 · internal anchor

    Monte Carlo simulations of nuclear cascades in NGC 1068 demonstrate that injected nuclear composition imprints on neutrino and gamma-ray spectra, supported by a re-analysis of archival COMPTEL observations.

  • TeV-PeV Gamma-ray and Neutrino Emission in the Galactic Plane astro-ph.HE · 2026-06-22 · unverdicted · none · ref 111 · internal anchor

    Alternative ISRF models produce only modest changes to the LHAASO diffuse gamma-ray fit; the associated pp neutrinos remain consistent with IceCube all-sky data and compatible with ANTARES/KM3NeT limits.