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trans-GZK Cosmic Rays: Strings, Black Holes, Neutrinos, or All Three?

William S. Burgett, Gabor Domokos, Susan Kovesi-Domokos

hep-pharXiv:hep-ph/0409029

Abstract

We review the scenario in which ``strongly interacting neutrinos'' are responsible for inducing airshowers with inferred energies E > 8×1019 eV. This possibility arises naturally in string excitation models having a unification scale effectively decoupled from the Planck scale. We then show that phenomenological quantum gravity considerations reveal an equivalency of ``mini-black hole'' and strongly interacting neutrino pictures for explaining trans-GZK events. This equivalence can be exploited to predict single particle inclusive distributions. The resulting observable consequences in airshower development are studied using the Adaptive Longitudinal Profile Shower (ALPS) simulation.

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