2017/09/26 by Oscar Castillo-Felisola, Castillo-Felisola, Oscar, Cristóbal Corral +5
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) #Neutrino Physics Research
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1709.09144
openalex publication_date 2017/09/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Up to date, there is no consensus regarding the origin of ultra-high energy\ncosmic rays (UHECR) beyond the Greisen--Zatsepin--Kuzmin (GZK) limit. In order\nfor these UHECRs to reach the Earth, an extremely suppressed interaction\nbetween them and the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is required, which is\nimpossible for standard model (SM) particles, except neutrinos. In this letter,\nwe present constraints on the parameter space of models involving axion-like\nparticles and dark photons, as candidates for UHECRs, by assuming that these\nparticles can traverse the visible Universe without decaying. In the case of\naxion-like particles, the constraints are tighter than those given in previous\nworks. We present for the first time constraints on the parameter space of dark\nphoton models, by considering their kinetic term mixing with SM photons.\n