Effects of cosmological constant on motion of UHECR particles

Abstract

Recent astronomical observations manifest that about two-thirds of the whole energy in the Universe is contributed by a small positive cosmological constant Λ (>0). Then, an asymptotically de Sitter spacetime is premised naturally. However, physics in the de Sitter spacetime is very different from that in the Minkowski spacetime. As the first step, a covariant formalism of the kinematics in the de Sitter spacetime is presented here. By solving exactly the equations of motion for a field, we obtain the dispersion relation of a free particle. It is noticed that the dispersion relation is dependent on the degree of freedom of angular momentum of the particle. We show the threshold anomaly of the ultra high energy cosmic ray disappears naturally in the framework of the de Sitter kinematics.