Possible galactic sources of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays and a strategy for their detection via gravitational lensing

Abstract

If decays of superheavy relic particles in the galactic halo are responsible for ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays, these particles must be clustered to account for small-scale anisotropy in the AGASA data. We show that the masses of such clusters are large enough for them to gravitationally lens stars and galaxies in the background. We propose a general strategy that can be used to detect such clusters via gravitational lensing, or to rule out the hypothesis of decaying relic particles as the origin of highest-energy cosmic rays.