A cosmic Zevatron based on cyclotron auto-resonance
Abstract
A Tevatron is an accelerator capable of imparting TeV energies to particles like a proton (1 TeV = 1012 eV). By analogy, a Zevatron is an accelerator scheme envisaged to accelerate particles to ZeV energies (1 ZeV = 1021 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.