What’s the use of Ultrahigh Energy Cosmic Rays ? Prof. Glennys Farrar (New York University)

Thursday Sep 3, 2015, 3:15 PM → 5:15 PM Pacific/Honolulu

112 (Watanabe)

With more than ten thousand UHECR (Ultra High Energy Cosmic Ray) showers now measured by the hybrid detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory and an order of magnitude more events measured with the surface detector alone, plus the Telescope Array now fully online in the Northern Hemisphere, it is a good moment to ask what these events are good for. In this talk, I will first briefly survey the detectors and observations, and then talk about two particularly exciting new arenas of Physics that have been opened by this data: i) hints of a new regime in particle physics interactions above 70 TeV center-of-mass energy and ii) the Galactic magnetic field and its surprising lensing effects. An update on the Astrophysics of UHECRs will be given, as time permits. This talk should be accessible to UH physicists in all sub-fields.

Slides UHcolloq_GMF090315.pdf UHphysicsColloq090315.pdf