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Electroweak jet cascading in the decay of superheavy particles
V Berezinsky1, M Kachelriess, S Ostapchenko
1INFN, Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, I-67010 Assergi (AQ), Italy.
Physical Review Letters
|October 26, 2002
Abstract:
We study decays of superheavy particles X into leptons. We show that they initiate cascades similar to QCD parton jets, if m(X) greater or similar 10(6) GeV. Electroweak cascading is studied and the energy spectra of the produced leptons are calculated in the framework of a broken SU(2) model of weak interactions. As application, important for the Z-burst model for ultrahigh energy cosmic rays, we consider decays of superheavy particles coupled on tree level only to neutrinos and derive a stringent limit for these decays from the observed diffuse extragalactic gamma-ray flux.