# Ultra-high energy cosmic rays, cosmological constant, and $θ$-vacua

Jaikumar, Prashanth and Mazumdar, Anupam (2003) Ultra-high energy cosmic rays, cosmological constant, and $θ$-vacua. Physical review letters, 90 (19). ISSN 1079-7114

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PhysRevLett.90.191301.pdf - Published Version

## Abstract

We propose that the origin of ultra-high energy cosmic rays beyond the GZK cutoff and the origin of small cosmological constant can both be explained by vacuum tunneling effects in a theory with degenerate vacua and fermionic doublets. By considering the possibility of tunneling from a particular winding number state, accompanied by violation of some global quantum number of fermions, the small value of the vacuum dark energy and the production of high energy cosmic rays are shown to be related. We predict that the energy of such cosmic rays should be at least $5\times 10^{14}$ GeV.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Physical review letters
ReVTeX, 4 pages, reference added. This version to appear in Phys. Rev. Lett
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/3100
Subjects:
Departments:
ID Code:
63485
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
02 May 2013 09:46
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published