Cosmic rays from heavy particle decays

TL;DR

This paper explores how heavy dark matter particle decays, facilitated by virtual black holes, could significantly contribute to high-energy cosmic rays and neutrinos, potentially explaining observations near the GZK limit.

Contribution

It introduces a multidimensional gravity model with small-scale interactions and estimates decay rates of ultra-massive particles, linking them to cosmic ray and neutrino fluxes.

Findings

Decays of ultra-massive particles can produce observable high-energy cosmic rays.

Such decays could explain neutrino fluxes detected by underwater and ice detectors.

Parameters can be tuned to match observed cosmic ray fluxes near the GZK limit.

Abstract

Multidimensional modification of gravity with a smaller mass scale of the gravitational interaction is considered. Stable by assumption dark matter particles could decay via interactions with virtual black holes. The decay rates of such processes are estimated. It is shown that with the proper fixation of the parameters the decays of these ultra-massive particles can give noticeable contribution to the flux of high energy cosmic rays in particular, near the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin limit. Such particles can also create neutrinos of very high energies observed in the existing huge underwater or ice-cube detectors.