Magnetic Monopoles as the Highest Energy Cosmic Ray Primaries

Abstract

We suggest that the highest energy $\text{gsim}10^{20}eV$ cosmic ray primaries may be relativistic magnetic monopoles. Motivations for this hypothesis are that conventional primaries are problematic, while monopoles are naturally accelerated to $E\sim 10^{20}eV$ by galactic magnetic fields. By matching the cosmic monopole production mechanism to the observed highest energy cosmic ray flux we estimate the monopole mass to be $\sim 10^{10\pm 1}GeV$.

Comments: LaTex, 16 pages, no figures