Identifying the Unidentified Auger UHE Cosmic Rays with the Help of the Standard Model of Particle Physics

TL;DR

This paper proposes that if the Standard Model and quantum gravity are valid at all times, the Cosmic Background Radiation's properties could allow ultra-high-energy cosmic rays to travel further, aiding in source identification.

Contribution

It introduces a hypothesis that the CBR's coupling properties affect UHECR propagation, enabling identification of their sources beyond previous limits.

Findings

UHECR can travel ten times further if CBR does not couple to right-handed quarks.

Identification of sources for 4 out of 6 UHECRs previously untraceable.

Potential to identify the source of a 320 EeV UHECR.

Abstract

I have shown that if we assume that the Standard Model of particle physics and Feynman-Weinberg quantum gravity holds at all times, then in the very early universe, the Cosmic Background Radiation (CBR) cannot couple to right handed electrons and quarks. If this property of CBR has persisted to the present day, the Ultra HIgh Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECR) can propagate a factor of ten further than they could if the CBR were an electromagnetic field, since most of the cross section for pion production when a UHECR hits a CBR photon is due to a quark spin flip, and such a flip cannot occur if the CBR photon cannot couple to right handed quarks. The GZM effect will still reduce the number of UHECR, but UHECR can arrive from a distance of a redshift of up to $z=0.1$. I show that taking this additional propagation distance into account allows us to identify the sources of 4 of the 6 UHECR which the Pierre Auger Collaboration could not identify, and also identify the source of the 320 EeV UHECR seen by the Fly's Eye instrument. I suggest an experiment to test this hypothesis about the CBR.