Thursday, November 21, 2013, 3pm
Location: Room 1110 of the Nguyen Engineering Building

Robert Ehrlich
School of Physics, Astronomy, and Computational Sciences (retired)
George Mason University

Evidence for a Peak at 5.86 PeV in the Cosmic Ray Spectrum: Implications for Tachyonic Neutrinos and Cosmic Strings

Abstract

Evidence is reported for a peak at 5.86 +/- 0.75 PeV for cosmic rays having arrival directions within several degrees of 68 candidate sources, which adds support to a 1999 claim of a peak at 4.5 +/- 2.2 PeV.  Moreover, the  existence of such a peak had been suggested prior to that earlier claim based on the assumption that the electron neutrino is a tachyon, having m² approximately -0.25eV², that in turn was based on a fit to the cosmic ray spectrum.  An examination of the distribution of the candidate sources of the cosmic rays at the peak energy suggests that their source may be extragalactic cosmic strings.