FAST NEUTRON - MIRROR NEUTRON OSCILLATION AND ULTRA HIGH ENERGY COSMIC RAYS

If there exists the mirror world, a parallel hidden sector of particles with exactly the same microphysics as that of the observable particles, then the primordial nucleosynthesis constraints require that the temperature of the cosmic background of mirror relic photons should be smaller than that of the ordinary relic photons, T′/T < 0.5 or so. On the other hand, the present experimental and astrophysical limits allow a rather fast neutron–mirror neutron oscillation in vacuum, with an oscillation time τ ∼ 1 s, much smaller than the neutron lifetime. We show that this could provide a very efficient mechanism for transporting ultra high energy protons at large cosmological distances. The mechanism operates as follows: a super-GZK energy proton scatters a relic photon producing a neutron that oscillates into a mirror neutron which then decays into a mirror proton. The latter undergoes a symmetric process, scattering a mirror relic photon and producing back an ordinary nucleon, but only after traveling a distance (T/ T′)^3 times larger than ordinary protons. This may relax or completely remove the GZK-cutoff in the cosmic ray spectrum and also explain the correlation between the observed ultra high energy protons and far distant sources as are the BL Lacs.