0000000000424370
AUTHOR
Fred Sarazin
Design, upgrade and characterization of the silicon photomultiplier front-end for the AMIGA detector at the Pierre Auger Observatory
The successful installation, commissioning, and operation of the Pierre Auger Observatory would not have been possible without the strong commitment and effort from the technical and administrative staff in Malargue. We are very grateful to the following agencies and organizations for financial support: Argentina -Comision Nacional de Energia Atomica; Agencia Nacional de Promocion Cientifica y Tecnologica (ANPCyT); Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas (CONICET); Gobierno de la Provincia de Mendoza; Municipalidad de Malargue; NDM Holdings and Valle Las Lenas; in gratitude for their continuing cooperation over land access; Australia -the Australian Research Council; Braz…
The FRAM robotic telescope for atmospheric monitoring at the Pierre Auger Observatory
FRAM (F/Photometric Robotic Atmospheric Monitor) is a robotic telescope operated at the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina for the purposes of atmospheric monitoring using stellar photometry. As a passive system which does not produce any light that could interfere with the observations of the fluorescence telescopes of the observatory, it complements the active monitoring systems that use lasers. We discuss the applications of stellar photometry for atmospheric monitoring at optical observatories in general and the particular modes of operation employed by the Auger FRAM. We describe in detail the technical aspects of FRAM, the hardware and software requirements for a successful operati…
Design and implementation of the AMIGA embedded system for data acquisition
The successful installation, commissioning, and operation of the Pierre Auger Observatory would not have been possible without the strong commitment and effort from the technical and admin-istrative staff in Malargtie. We are very grateful to the following agencies and organizations for financial support: Comision Nacional de Energla Atomica, Agencia Nacional de Promocion Cientffica y Tec-nologica (ANPCyT) , Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientfficas y Tecnicas (CONICET) , Gobierno de la Provincia de Mendoza, Municipalidad de Malargtie, NDM Holdings and Valle Las Leilas, in gratitude for their continuing cooperation over land access, Argentina; the Australian Research Council; Conselho…
Reconstruction of events recorded with the surface detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory
Cosmic rays arriving at Earth collide with the upper parts of the atmosphere, thereby inducing extensive air showers. When secondary particles from the cascade arrive at the ground, they are measured by surface detector arrays. We describe the methods applied to the measurements of the surface detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory to reconstruct events with zenith angles less than 60 using the timing and signal information recorded using the water-Cherenkov detector stations. In addition, we assess the accuracy of these methods in reconstructing the arrival directions of the primary cosmic ray particles and the sizes of the induced showers.
The Fluorescence Detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory
The Pierre Auger Observatory is a hybrid detector for ultra-high energy cosmic rays. It combines a surface array to measure secondary particles at ground level together with a fluorescence detector to measure the development of air showers in the atmosphere above the array. The fluorescence detector comprises 24 large telescopes specialized for measuring the nitrogen fluorescence caused by charged particles of cosmic ray air showers. In this paper we describe the components of the fluorescence detector including its optical system, the design of the camera, the electronics, and the systems for relative and absolute calibration. We also discuss the operation and the monitoring of the detecto…
High-resolution γ-ray spectroscopy: a versatile tool for nuclear β-decay studies at TRIUMF-ISAC
High-resolution γ-ray spectroscopy is essential to fully exploit the unique, high-quality beams available at the next generation of radioactive ion beam facilities such as the TRIUMF isotope separator and accelerator (ISAC). The 8π spectrometer, which consists of 20 Compton-suppressed HPGe detectors, has recently been reconfigured for a vigorous research programme in weak interaction and nuclear structure physics. With the addition of a variety of ancillary detectors it has become the world's most powerful device dedicated to β-decay studies. This paper provides a brief overview of the apparatus and highlights from recent experiments.
Testing effects of Lorentz invariance violation in the propagation of astroparticles with the Pierre Auger Observatory
The successful installation, commissioning, and operation of the Pierre Auger Observatory would not have been possible without the strong commitment and effort from the technical and administrative staff in Malargüe. We are very grateful to the following agencies and organizations for financial support: Argentina — Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica; Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica (ANPCyT); Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET); Gobierno de la Provincia de Mendoza; Municipalidad de Malargüe; NDM Holdings and Valle Las Leñas; in gratitude for their continuing cooperation over land access; Australia — the Australian Research Council; Be…
Measurement of the Fluctuations in the Number of Muons in Extensive Air Showers with the Pierre Auger Observatory
The successful installation, commissioning, and operation of the Pierre Auger Observatory would not have been possible without the strong commitment and effort from the technical and administrative staff in Malargue. We are very grateful to the following agencies and organizations for financial support: Argentina-Comision Nacional de Energia Atomica, Agencia Nacional de Promocion Cientifica y Tecnologica (ANPCyT), Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas (CONICET), Gobierno de la Provincia de Mendoza, Municipalidad de Malargue, NDM Holdings and Valle Las Lenas; in gratitude for their continuing cooperation over land access; Australia-the Australian Research Council; Brazil…
Muons in air showers at the Pierre Auger Observatory
We present the first hybrid measurement of the average muon number in air showers at ultrahigh energies, initiated by cosmic rays with zenith angles between 62° and 80°. The measurement is based on 174 hybrid events recorded simultaneously with the surface detector array and the fluorescence detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory. The muon number for each shower is derived by scaling a simulated reference profile of the lateral muon density distribution at the ground until it fits the data. A 1019eV shower with a zenith angle of 67°, which arrives at the surface detector array at an altitude of 1450 m above sea level, contains on average (2.68±0.04±0.48(sys))×107 muons with energies large…
Searches for anisotropies in the arrival directions of the highest energy cosmic rays detected by the Pierre Auger Observatory
We analyze the distribution of arrival directions of ultra-high energy cosmic rays recorded at the Pierre Auger Observatory in 10 years of operation. The data set, about three times larger than that used in earlier studies, includes arrival directions with zenith angles up to $80^\circ$, thus covering from $-90^\circ$ to $+45^\circ$ in declination. After updating the fraction of events correlating with the active galactic nuclei (AGNs) in the V��ron-Cetty and V��ron catalog, we subject the arrival directions of the data with energies in excess of 40 EeV to different tests for anisotropy. We search for localized excess fluxes and for self-clustering of event directions at angular scales up t…
Update on the correlation of the highest energy cosmic rays with nearby extragalactic matter
Data collected by the Pierre Auger Observatory through 31 August 2007 showed evidence for anisotropy in the arrival directions of cosmic rays above the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuz'min energy threshold, 6 x 10(19) eV. The anisotropy was measured by the fraction of arrival directions that are less than 3.1 degrees from the position of an active galactic nucleus within 75 Mpc (using the Veron-Cetty and Veron 12th catalog). An updated measurement of this fraction is reported here using the arrival directions of cosmic rays recorded above the same energy threshold through 31 December 2009. The number of arrival directions has increased from 27 to 69, allowing a more precise measurement. The correlating…
Measurement of the radiation energy in the radio signal of extensive air showers as a universal estimator of cosmic-ray energy
We measure the energy emitted by extensive air showers in the form of radio emission in the frequency range from 30 to 80 MHz. Exploiting the accurate energy scale of the Pierre Auger Observatory, we obtain a radiation energy of 15.8±0.7(stat)±6.7(syst) MeV for cosmic rays with an energy of 1 EeV arriving perpendicularly to a geomagnetic field of 0.24 G, scaling quadratically with the cosmic-ray energy. A comparison with predictions from state-of-the-art first-principles calculations shows agreement with our measurement. The radiation energy provides direct access to the calorimetric energy in the electromagnetic cascade of extensive air showers. Comparison with our result thus allows the d…
Trigger and aperture of the surface detector array of the Pierre Auger Observatory
The surface detector array of the Pierre Auger Observatory consists of 1600 water-Cherenkov detectors, for the study of extensive airshowers (EAS) generated by ultra-high-energy cosmic rays. We describe the trigger hierarchy, from the identification of candidates howers at the level of a single detector, amongst a large background (mainly random single cosmic ray muons), up to the selection of real events and the rejection of random coincidences. Such trigger makes the surface detector array fully efficient for the detection of EAS with energy above 3 x 1018 eV, for all zenith angles between 03 and 603, independently of the position of the impact point and of the mass of the primary particl…
Features of the Energy Spectrum of Cosmic Rays above 2.5×10$^{18}$ eV Using the Pierre Auger Observatory
We report a measurement of the energy spectrum of cosmic rays above $2.5{\times} 10^{18}$ eV based on $215,030$ events. New results are presented: at about $1.3{\times} 10^{19}$ eV, the spectral index changes from $2.51 \pm 0.03 \textrm{ (stat.)} \pm 0.05 \textrm{ (sys.)}$ to $3.05 \pm 0.05 \textrm{ (stat.)}\pm 0.10\textrm{ (sys.)}$, evolving to $5.1\pm0.3\textrm{ (stat.)} \pm 0.1\textrm{ (sys.)}$ beyond $5{\times} 10^{19}$ eV, while no significant dependence of spectral features on the declination is seen in the accessible range. These features of the spectrum can be reproduced in models with energy-dependent mass composition. The energy density in cosmic rays above $5{\times} 10^{18}$ eV …
Correlation of the highest-energy cosmic rays with the positions of nearby active galactic nuclei
Data collected by the Pierre Auger Observatory provide evidence for anisotropy in the arrival directions of the cosmic rays with the ighest-energies, which are correlated with the positions of relatively nearby active galactic nuclei (AGN) [Pierre Auger Collaboration, Science 318 (2007) 938]. The correlation has maximum significance for cosmic rays with energy greater than ~6 x 1019 eV and AGN at a distance less than ~75 Mpc. We have confirmed the anisotropy at a confidence level of more than 99% through a test with parameters specified a priori, using an independent data set. The observed correlation is compatible with the hypothesis that cosmic rays with the highest-energies originate fro…