Magnetic reconnection as the cause of cosmic ray excess from the
  heliospheric tail
  The observation of a broad excess of sub-TeV cosmic rays compatible with the
direction of the heliospheric tail (Nagashima et al. 1998) and the discovery of
two significant localized excess regions of multi-TeV cosmic rays by the
MILAGRO collaboration (Abdo et al. 2008), also from the same region of the sky,
have raised questions on their origin. In particular, the coincidence of the
most significant localized region with the direction of the heliospheric tail
and the small angular scale of the observed anisotropy (~ 10deg) is suggestive
a local origin and of a possible connection to the low energy broad excess.
Cosmic ray acceleration from magnetic reconnection in the magnetotail is
proposed as a possible source of the energetic particles.
