A cosmic Zevatron based on cyclotron auto-resonance

TL;DR

This paper proposes a new cosmic accelerator scheme called Zevatron, which can accelerate nuclei to ZeV energies through cyclotron auto-resonance in strong magnetic and radiation fields, explaining ultra-high-energy cosmic rays.

Contribution

It introduces a novel Zevatron mechanism based on cyclotron auto-resonance, enabling acceleration of nuclei to ZeV energies in astrophysical environments.

Findings

Nuclei can reach ZeV energies under specific auto-resonance conditions.

The scheme explains the origin of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays.

Conditions involve magnetic field strength, particle charge-to-mass ratio, and radiation frequency.

Abstract

A Tevatron is an accelerator capable of imparting TeV energies to particles like a proton (1 TeV = $10^{12}$ eV). By analogy, a Zevatron is an accelerator scheme envisaged to accelerate particles to ZeV energies (1 ZeV = $10^{21}$ eV). Zevatron schemes have been proposed to explain the acceleration of ultra-high-energy-cosmic-ray (UHECR) particles detected on Earth since 1962. Here we show that nuclei of hydrogen, helium, and iron-56, may be accelerated to ZeV energies, if injected along the common direction of an existing ultra-strong magnetic field and a super-intense radiation field. This can happen if the injection speed, the magnetic field strength, the charge-to-mass ratio of the nucleus, and the radiation field frequency, are such that an auto-resonance condition is fulfilled, whereby the cyclotron frequency of the particle, around the magnetic field lines, matches the Doppler-shifted frequency of the radiation field.