Cosmic ray drift, the second knee and galactic anisotropies

CANDIA, JULIÁN; MOLLERACH, SILVIA; ROULET, ESTEBAN

JOURNAL OF HIGH ENERGY PHYSICS - (Online)

Institute of Physics Publishing and International School for Advanced Studies

Lugar: Bristol (Reino Unido), Trieste (Italia) ; Año: 2002 vol. 12 p. 320 - 328

1029-8479

We show that the second knee in the cosmic ray spectrum (i.e. the steepening occurring at E ~ 4 x 1017 eV) could be related to drift effects affecting the heaviest nuclear component, the iron group nuclei, in a scenario in which the knee at 3 x 1015 eV indicates the onset of drift effects in the lighter proton component. We also study the anisotropies resulting from diffusion and drift currents in the Galaxy, showing their potential relevance to account for the AGASA observations at E ~ 1018 eV, before the extragalactic component becomes dominant.