Possible galactic sources of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays and a strategy for their detection via gravitational lensing

If decays of superheavy relic particles in the galactic halo are responsibl e for ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays, these particles must be clustered to ac count for small-scale anisotropy in the AGASA data. We show that the masses of such clusters are large enough for them to gravitationally lens stars a nd galaxies in the background. We propose a general strategy that can be us ed to detect such clusters via gravitational lensing, or to rule out the hy pothesis of decaying relic particles as the origin of highest energy cosmic rays. (C) 2001 MAIK "Nauka/Interperiodica".