The Lamb Shift and Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays

Abstract

On the analogy with the Lamb shift, we study the vacuum effect that proton's electric field interacts with virtual particles in the vacuum. We find a possible quantum instability that triggered by an external force, proton's electric field interacting with virtual particles spontaneously induces a quantum force that back reacts on the proton in the direction of the external trigger force. Such a quantum-induced force accelerates the proton runaway, by gaining the zero-point energy from the vacuum (~10^{-5} eV/cm). This effect possibly accounts for the mysterious origin and spectrum of ultra high-energy cosmic ray (UHECR) events above 10^{20}eV, and explains the puzzle why the GZK cutoff is absent. The candidates of these events could be primary protons from the early Universe.

Comments: 8 pages, the version for the Proceedings of QABP2003, Hiroshima, Japan