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HK: Fachverband Hadronen und Kerne
HK 17: Astroparticle Physics
HK 17.1: Invited Group Report
Monday, March 16, 2009, 16:30–17:00, H-ZO 70
Measuring the highest-energy particles in the universe — •Heino Falcke — Dept. Astronomy, Radboud University, Nijmegen, NL — ASTRON, Dwingeloo, NL
Since almost 100 hundred years we know that the earth is exposed to cosmic rays, which cause the ionisation of the atmosphere and also genetic mutations. Cosmic rays are actually mainly composed of energetic particles, mostly protons and atomic nuclei. The energy of these particles can reach up to 1020 eV, an energy which surpasses what can be achieved in even the largest particle accelerators on earth by many orders of magnitude. For this reason, ultra-high energy cosmic rays are equally interesting to particle physicists as well as astronomers. A big mystery is the origin of these particles. Where do they come from? Which processes can accelerate to such high energies? Candidate sources of cosmic rays are supernova explosions and supermassive black holes. However, also more exotic theories, like the decay of primordial strings have been proposed. A suite of major experiments will be trying to answer these questions in the near future. Among them are the Pierre Auger Observatory, a huge particle detector array in Argentina, KM3NET and IceCube, which are huge neutrino telescopes, and the LOFAR radio telescope, which not only will study the sources of cosmic rays but also is used to constrain some of the highest energy particles one can ever expect to detect. The talk will address the scientific issues surrounding ultra-high energy cosmic rays and neutrinos as well as the related experimental efforts.