Astrophysique à Haute Energie

Cosmic rays are energetic particles (mainly protons) that constantly bombard the Earth’s atmosphere from outer space. They were discovered more than a century ago, but their origin is still debated. This is because cosmic rays are strongly deflected by interstellar magnetic fields, which makes their particle distribution function almost perfectly isotropic. This implies that the observed arrival direction of a cosmic ray particle does not point to the site of its production, i.e. cosmic ray astronomy is not feasible.

More than one century after their discovery, the origin of cosmic rays remains one of the most important open questions in astrophysics. They are detected as a flux of charged particles, mainly protons and light nuclei, reaching extremely high energies (up to around 10^20 eV). The detection of cosmic rays implies the existence of efficient particle accelerators in the Universe.