trans-GZK Cosmic Rays: Strings, Black Holes, Neutrinos, or All Three?
We review the scenario in which ``strongly interacting neutrinos'' are responsible for inducing airshowers with inferred energies $E > 8\times10^{19}$ eV. This possibility arises naturally in string excitation models having a unification scale effectively decoupled from the Planck scale. We then show that phenomenological quantum gravity considerations reveal an equivalency of ``mini-black hole'' and strongly interacting neutrino pictures for explaining trans-GZK events. This equivalence can be exploited to predict single particle inclusive distributions. The resulting observable consequences in airshower development are studied using the Adaptive Longitudinal Profile Shower (ALPS) simulation.
hep-ph↗