{
  "id": "hep-ph/0207046",
  "version": "v2",
  "published": "2002-07-03T12:55:32.000Z",
  "updated": "2003-05-19T16:21:19.000Z",
  "title": "The Lamb Shift and Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays",
  "authors": [
    "She-Sheng Xue"
  ],
  "comment": "8 pages, the version for the Proceedings of QABP2003, Hiroshima, Japan",
  "categories": [
    "hep-ph"
  ],
  "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.",
  "revisions": [
    {
      "version": "v2",
      "updated": "2003-05-19T16:21:19.000Z"
    }
  ],
  "analyses": {
    "keywords": [
      "ultra high energy cosmic rays",
      "lamb shift",
      "virtual particles",
      "ultra high-energy cosmic ray",
      "protons electric field interacts"
    ],
    "note": {
      "typesetting": "TeX",
      "pages": 8,
      "language": "en",
      "license": "arXiv",
      "status": "editable",
      "inspire": 589768,
      "adsabs": "2002hep.ph....7046X"
    }
  }
}