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Abstract:

Large-scale accretion shocks around massive clusters of galaxies, generically expected in hierarchical scenarios of cosmological structure formation, are shown to be plausible sources of the observed ultrahigh energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) by accelerating a mixture of heavy nuclei including the iron group elements. Current observations can be explained if the source composition at injection for the heavier nuclei is somewhat enhanced from simple expectations for the accreting gas. The proposed picture should be clearly testable by current and upcoming facilities in the near future through characteristic features in the UHECR spectrum, composition and anisotropy, in particular the rapid increase of the average mass composition with energy from 1019 to 1020 eV. The associated X-ray and gamma-ray signatures are also briefly discussed.