Search results for "COSMIC"
showing 10 items of 656 documents
The relationship between the Sahelian and previous 2nd Guinean rainy seasons: a monsoon regulation by soil wetness?
2002
The correlation of 0.61 found between observed July–September Sahelian rainfall in year 0 and September–November Guinean rainfall in year - 1, led us to explore the statistical relationships between precipitation, soil moisture and near surface Moist Static Energy (MSE) gradients in West Africa. These analyses were performed over successive 30-year periods and specifically, the most recent period between 1968–1998. It is shown from observations, National Centers for Environmental Predictions and National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP/NCAR) reanalyses and from the Global Soil Wetness Project (GSWP) database, that wet Sahelian rainy seasons are preceded by abnormally wet soils over th…
Constraints on the origin of cosmic rays above 10^18 eV from large-scale anisotropy searches in data of the Pierre Auger Observatory
2012
A thorough search for large-scale anisotropies in the distribution of arrival directions of cosmic rays detected above 10(18) eV at the Pierre Auger Observatory is reported. For the first time, these large-scale anisotropy searches are performed as a function of both the right ascension and the declination and expressed in terms of dipole and quadrupole moments. Within the systematic uncertainties, no significant deviation from isotropy is revealed. Upper limits on dipole and quadrupole amplitudes are derived under the hypothesis that any cosmic ray anisotropy is dominated by such moments in this energy range. These upper limits provide constraints on the production of cosmic rays above 10(…
The rapid atmospheric monitoring system of the Pierre Auger Observatory
2012
The Pierre Auger Observatory is a facility built to detect air showers produced by cosmic rays above 1017 eV. During clear nights with a low illuminated moon fraction, the UV fluorescence light produced by air showers is recorded by optical telescopes at the Observatory. To correct the observations for variations in atmospheric conditions, atmospheric monitoring is performed at regular intervals ranging from several minutes (for cloud identification) to several hours (for aerosol conditions) to several days (for vertical profiles of temperature, pressure, and humidity). In 2009, the monitoring program was upgraded to allow for additional targeted measurements of atmospheric conditions shor…
Bounds on the density of sources of ultra-high energy cosmic rays from the Pierre Auger Observatory
2013
We derive lower bounds on the density of sources of ultra-high energy cosmic rays from the lack of significant clustering in the arrival directions of the highest energy events detected at the Pierre Auger Observatory. The density of uniformly distributed sources of equal intrinsic intensity was found to be larger than similar to (0.06 – 5) x 10(-4) Mpc(-3) at 95% CL, depending on the magnitude of the magnetic defections. Similar bounds, in the range (0.2 – 7) x 10(-4) Mpc(-3), were obtained for sources following the local matter distribution.
Interpretation of the depths of maximum of extensive air showers measured by the Pierre Auger Observatory
2013
To interpret the mean depth of cosmic ray air shower maximum and its dispersion, we parametrize those two observables as functions of the first two moments of the ln A distribution. We examine the goodness of this simple method through simulations of test mass distributions. The application of the parameterization to Pierre Auger Observatory data allows one to study the energy dependence of the mean ln A and of its variance under the assumption of selected hadronic interaction models. We discuss possible implications of these dependences in term of interaction models and astrophysical cosmic ray sources.
Measurement of the Depth of Maximum of Extensive Air Showers above 10(18) eV
2010
We describe the measurement of the depth of maximum, Xmax, of the longitudinal development of air showers induced by cosmic rays. Almost four thousand events above 10¹⁸ eV observed by the fluorescence detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory in coincidence with at least one surface detector station are selected for the analysis. The average shower maximum was found to evolve with energy at a rate of (106⁺³⁵₋₂₁) g/cm²/decade below 1018.24 ± 0.05 eV and (24 ± 3) g/cm²/decade above this energy. The measured shower-to-shower fluctuations decrease from about 55 to 26 g/cm². The interpretation of these results in terms of the cosmic ray mass composition is briefly discussed.
Search for signatures of magnetically-induced alignment in the arrival directions measured by the Pierre Auger Observatory
2011
We present the results of an analysis of data recorded at the Pierre Auger Observatory in which we search for groups of directionally-aligned events (or ‘multiplets’) which exhibit a correlation between arrival direc- tion and the inverse of the energy. These signatures are expected from sets of events coming from the same source after having been deflected by intervening coherent magnetic fields. The observation of several events from the same source would open the possibility to accurately reconstruct the position of the source and also measure the integral of the component of the magnetic field orthogonal to the trajectory of the cos- mic rays. We describe the largest multiplets found an…
Limits on a muon flux from Kaluza-Klein dark matter annihilations in the Sun from the IceCube 22-string detector
2010
A search for muon neutrinos from Kaluza-Klein dark matter annihilations in the Sun has been performed with the 22-string configuration of the IceCube neutrino detector using data collected in 104.3 days of live-time in 2007. No excess over the expected atmospheric background has been observed. Upper limits have been obtained on the annihilation rate of captured lightest Kaluza-Klein particle (LKP) WIMPs in the Sun and converted to limits on the LKP-proton cross-sections for LKP masses in the range 250 -- 3000 GeV. These results are the most stringent limits to date on LKP annihilation in the Sun.
Muons in air showers at the Pierre Auger Observatory
2015
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…
Upper limit on the cosmic-ray photon fraction at EeV energies from the Pierre Auger Observatory
2009
From direct observations of the longitudinal development of ultra-high energy air showers performed with the Pierre Auger Observatory, upper limits of 3.8%, 2.4%, 3.5% and 11.7% (at 95% c.l.) are obtained on the fraction of cosmic-ray photons above 2, 3, 5 and 10 EeV (1 EeV equivalent to 10(18) eV), respectively. These are the first experimental limits on ultra-high energy photons at energies below 10 EeV. The results complement previous constraints on top-down models from array data and they reduce systematic uncertainties in the interpretation of shower data in terms of primary flux, nuclear composition and proton-air cross-section.