Abstract
The origin and physics of the highest energy particles observed continues to elude us. While there are an increasing number of events measured, the number of theories to account for them increases as well. We will briefly review many of the current proposals, and then concentrate on the concept that radio galaxies may account for most, if not all of these events. There are two key steps in the argument: First, only for radio galaxies is there an argument that the physics of these sources requires particles of about 1021 eV in the sources, the radio galaxy hot spots or shocks in relativistic jets. Second, we introduce a model for a magnetic halo wind for our Galaxy, which allows considerable bending of the orbits of these particles as they come into our Galaxy. We show that back-tracing the orbits of the highest energy cosmic events suggests that they may all come from the Virgo cluster, and so probably from the active radio galaxy M87. This confirms a long standing prediction, as well as a theoretical model for the radio galaxy jet emission of M87. With this picture in hand, one clear expectation is that those powerful radio galaxies that have their relativistic jets stuck in the interstellar medium of the host galaxy, such as 30147, will yield limits on the production of secondary particles, such as high energy photons, neutrinos and any new kind of particle, expected in some extensions of the standard model in particle physics. An important consistency check is to explore the consequences of the parameters of the Galactic wind model used, but the new data from HIRES and AGASA as well as the future data expected from AUGER will be crucial in testing the model proposed here.
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Biermann, P.L., Ahn, EJ., Medina-Tanco, G., Stanev, T. (2001). Origin and Physics of the Highest Energy Particles in the Universe. In: Sánchez, N.G. (eds) Current Topics in Astrofundamental Physics: The Cosmic Microwave Background. NATO Science Series, vol 562. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0748-1_25
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