On heavy Majorana neutrinos as a source of the highest energy cosmic rays

Abstract

Cosmic ray events beyond the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin cut-off represent a great challenge for particle physics and cosmology. We show that the physics of heavy Majorana neutrinos, well defined by their masses, cross sections and lifetimes, could explain the highest energy cosmic rays as a consequence of the galactic annihilation of heavy neutrinos as cold dark matter particles. Galactic nuclei accelerators, colliding neutron stars (black holes) or shocks from the collapsed objects could produce ultra high energy cosmic rays as heavy neutrinos beyond the mass threshold at an arbitrary cosmic distance. We comment and also analyse the DAMA results with regard to heavy neutrinos as galactic halo CDM particles.