Cosmic plasma wakefield acceleration

Recently we proposed a new cosmic acceleration mechanism(1) which was based on the wakefields excited by the Alfven shocks in a relativistically flowing plasma. In this paper we include some omitted details, and show that there exists a threshold condition for transparency below which the accelerating particle is collision-free and suffers little energy loss in the plasma medium. The stochastic encounters of the random accelerating-decelerating phases results in a power-law energy spectrum: f(epsilon) proportional to 1/epsilon(2). As an example, we discuss the possible production of super-GZK ultra high energy cosmic rays (UHECR) in the atmosphere of gamma ray bursts. The estimated event rate in our model agrees with that from UHECR observations.