Unstable superheavy relic particles as a source of neutrinos responsible for the ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays

Abstract

Decays of superheavy relic particles may produce extremely energetic neutrinos. Their annihilations on the relic neutrinos can be the origin of the cosmic rays with energies beyond the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin cutoff. The red shift acts as a cosmological filter selecting the sources at some particular value z_e, for which the present neutrino energy is close to the Z pole of the annihilation cross section. We predict no directional correlation of the ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays with the galactic halo. At the same time, there can be some directional correlations in the data, reflecting the distribution of matter at red shift z=z_e. Both of these features are manifest in the existing data. Our scenario is consistent with the neutrino mass reported by Super-Kamiokande and requires no lepton asymmetry or clustering of the background neutrinos.