On the origin of ultra high energy cosmic ray particles

Abstract

Understanding physical mechanisms by which Nature succeeds in bestowing ‘macroscopic’ amounts of energy on single ‘microscopic’ particles remains one of the greatest challenges for both, astrophysicists seeking to understand the functioning of cosmic objects, and accelerator designers inventing new conjectures for more powerful machines. The first and introductory chapter of this contribution is a short retrospective on our early research work, in the ‘Mathematical Physics Division’ at Kiel, on the origin of Ultra High Energy Cosmic Ray Particles (UHECRP), beginning in the sixties and seventies with studies on Atmospheric Particle Propagation, proceeding in the seventies and eighties to investigations on Galactic Particle Transfer, and leading in the eighties and nineties to our present work on mechanisms for particle acceleration in pulsar magnetospheres. Cosmic rays, more than many fields of research, are found to be closely related to other branches of physics2. When looking on powerful cosmic accelera...