Astroparticle Physics 39–40 (2012) 1
Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect
Astroparticle Physics
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/astropart
Editorial
In 2012 we mark the 100 year anniversary of the discovery of
cosmic rays by Viktor Hess and for the occasion we decided to pub-
lish a Topical Issue for the journal Astroparticle Physics on this to-
pic. The Cosmic Ray topical issue summarizes the current
knowledge of the many aspects of the problem of the origin of
the cosmic ray particles.
It is now a good time to put together the issue because of recent
work that covers the wide energy range of detected cosmic rays
and led to the confirmation of some of the existing ideas as well
as to new very challenging and interesting new aspects. The X-
ray observation of supernova remnants revealed bright X-ray rims
that indicate magnetic field amplification, a necessary ingredient
for achieving very high energy in particle acceleration in supernova
shocks. The new gamma-ray telescopes have detected high energy
gamma rays coming from numerous supernova remnants, that are
likely of hadronic origin and would confirm that cosmic ray accel-
eration takes place in these astrophysical objects. Unexpected
trends in the chemical composition throughout the whole energy
range have been discovered, although there is still a disagreement
in the evaluation of the chemical composition of the highest energy
cosmic rays. Studies of the electron energy spectrum have shown
bumps at high energy and the measured ratio of positrons to elec-
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.astropartphys.2012.11.008
trons shows a rise at high energy that may indicate different pro-
cesses that range from positron production in pulsars to
annihilating dark matter. The anisotropy of cosmic rays has been
measured with an unprecedented accuracy.
We asked some of the leading researchers in the field to sum-
marize the new discoveries and present in their reviews the cur-
rent ideas in the field. There are also some contributed research
papers discussing some interesting features of cosmic rays physics.
The issue can be viewed on our electronic platform SciVerse
ScienceDirect (Volume 39–40C) and is freely available online for
all readers during the first month after publication.
We are very excited to announce this Topical Issue and we sin-
cerely thank the authors of the papers appearing in this issue for
their special effort in producing these comprehensive, highly infor-
mative and timely papers.
Sincerely yours,
Editors of Astroparticle Physics
Pasquale Blasi
Todor Stanev
E-mail addresses: blasi@arcetri.astro.it (P. Blasi),
stanev@bartol.udel.edu (T. Stanev)