Comprehensive Explanation of Cosmic-Ray "Anomalies": Quark Matter Formation by Heavy Nuclear Primaries

Abstract

It is proposed that the 100-TeV threshold for the appearance of anomalies in cosmic-ray interactions is associated with the critical energy of about 60 GeV/nucleon center-of-mass energy for phase transition to quark matter in nucleus-nucleus interactions. This proposal implies that the high-energy primary spectrum contains a significant heavy nuclear component (e.g., Fe).