Particle astrophysics articles within Nature Physics

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  • News & Views |

    A potential observation of low-energy antihelium-3 nuclei would have profound impacts on our understanding of the Galaxy. Experiments at particle colliders help us understand how cosmic antimatter travels over long distances before reaching Earth.

    • Aihong Tang

  • News & Views |

    Lorentz symmetry violations might produce anomalies in the propagation of particles travelling through the Universe. The IceCube Collaboration performed the most precise search for such an effect with neutrinos, finding no sign of anomalous behaviour.

    • Giulia Gubitosi

  • Editorial |

    A careful analysis of data obtained from the IceCube telescope in Antarctica shows that atmospheric neutrinos can be used as a tomographic probe of the Earth.

  • News & Views |

    Using data from the IceCube telescope, a study presents the first attempt at obtaining geophysical information about Earth’s internal structure from the flux of neutrinos that pass through it.

    • Véronique Van Elewyck

  • Letter |

    Geophysical properties of the Earth’s interior have been inferred by looking at the absorption of neutrinos as they pass through our planet.

    • Andrea Donini
    • , Sergio Palomares-Ruiz
    •  & Jordi Salvado

  • News & Views |

    Active galactic nuclei are firm favourites to be revealed as the source of cosmic rays, but solid evidence has proven elusive. A model taking both local and global nuclei propagation into account may help to close the deal.

    • Julia Becker Tjus

  • News & Views |

    While axions remain elusive, the CERN Axion Solar Telescope has now reached the interesting region where physics beyond the standard model could be glimpsed.

    • Maurizio Giannotti

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Axions are hypothetical light particles that could explain the dark matter. They could be produced in the interior of the Sun and the CERN Axion Solar Telescope sets the best limit on how strongly axions can interact with light.

    • V. Anastassopoulos
    • , S. Aune
    •  & K. Zioutas

  • Progress Article |

    Direct dark matter searches are pushing the limits on the scattering of weakly interacting massive particles on normal matter so WIMPs are running out of places to hide.

    • Jianglai Liu
    • , Xun Chen
    •  & Xiangdong Ji

  • Review Article |

    Dark matter could decay into conventional particles leaving behind specific signatures in the gamma rays and cosmic rays. Astronomical observations are used to search for these elusive dark matter footprints.

    • Jan Conrad
    •  & Olaf Reimer

  • Review Article |

    Neutrinos from deep space can be used as astronomical messengers, providing clues about the origin of cosmic rays or dark matter. The IceCube experiment is leading the way in neutrino astronomy.

    • Francis Halzen

  • Research Highlights |

    The 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to Takaaki Kajita and Arthur B. McDonald "for the discovery of neutrino oscillations, which shows that neutrinos have mass".

    • Andrea Taroni

  • News & Views |

    Photons emitted by extragalactic sources provide an opportunity to test quantum gravity effects that modify the speed of light in vacuum. Studying the arrival times of these cosmic messengers further constrains the energy scales involved.

    • Agnieszka Jacholkowska

  • Letter |

    The rotation curve of a galaxy reflects the galactic mass distribution. For the Milky Way, such observational data are incompatible with models based on baryonic matter alone, which could be due to the presence of dark matter in the inner Milky Way.

    • Fabio Iocco
    • , Miguel Pato
    •  & Gianfranco Bertone

  • News & Views |

    Dark matter remains experimentally elusive. But what if it is more classical than expected, resembling a spatially varying field? A network of atomic clocks would be able to detect its variations.

    • Rana Adhikari
    • , Paul Hamiton
    •  & Holger Müller

  • Letter |

    A cosmological model treating dark matter as a coherent quantum wave agrees well with conventional dark-matter theory on an astronomical scale. But on smaller scales, the quantum nature of wave-like dark matter can explain dark-matter cores that are observed in dwarf galaxies, which standard theory cannot.

    • Hsi-Yu Schive
    • , Tzihong Chiueh
    •  & Tom Broadhurst

  • Research Highlights |

    • Alison Wright

  • News & Views |

    Observations made by the Cassini spacecraft at the bow shock of Saturn suggest that electrons are likely to be accelerated to near-relativistic energies by strong astrophysical shocks.

    • Ian G. Richardson

  • Letter |

    Data from the Cassini spacecraft identify strong electron acceleration as the solar wind approaches the magnetosphere of Saturn. This so-called bow shock unexpectedly occurs even when the magnetic field is roughly parallel to the shock-surface normal. Knowledge of the magnetic dependence of electron acceleration will aid understanding of supernova remnants.

    • A. Masters
    • , L. Stawarz
    •  & M. K. Dougherty

  • News & Views |

    Supersymmetric particles are prime candidates to make up the dark matter of the Universe — yet the lack of evidence for them so far from the Large Hadron Collider could force a rethink.

    • Alexander Merle
    •  & Tommy Ohlsson

  • Research Highlights |

    • Alison Wright

  • News & Views |

    Geomagnetic storms driven by the solar wind can cause the flux of high-energy electrons in the Earth's Van Allen belts to rapidly fall. Analysis of data obtained during one such event from multiple spacecraft located at different altitudes in the magnetosphere reveals just where these electrons go.

    • Mary K. Hudson

  • Letter |

    Geomagnetic storms driven by the solar wind can cause a dramatic drop in the flux of high-energy electrons in the Earth’s outer Van Allen belt. Analysis of data obtained during such an event by three different sets of spacecraft suggests that these electrons are directed into space rather than lost to the atmosphere.

    • Drew L. Turner
    • , Yuri Shprits
    •  & Vassilis Angelopoulos

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