Search results for "raggi cosmici"
showing 10 items of 12 documents
Correlation of the highest-energy cosmic rays with nearby extragalactic objects.
2007
Using data collected at the Pierre Auger Observatory during the past 3.7 years, we demonstrated a correlation between the arrival directions of cosmic rays with energy above ~ 6x10^{19} electron volts and the positions of active galactic nuclei (AGN) lying within ~ 75 megaparsecs. We rejected the hypothesis of an isotropic distribution of these cosmic rays with at least a 99% confidence level from a prescribed a priori test. The correlation we observed is compatible with the hypothesis that the highest energy particles originate from nearby extragalactic sources whose flux has not been substantially reduced by interaction with the cosmic background radiation. AGN or objects having a similar…
Scaler mode technique for the ARGO-YBJ detector
2008
The ARGO-YBJ experiment has been designed to study the Extensive Air Showers with an energy threshold lower than that of the existing arrays by exploiting the high altitude location(4300 m a.s.l. in Tibet, P.R. China) and the full ground plane coverage. The lower energy limit of the detector (E $\sim$ 1 GeV) is reached by the scaler mode technique, i.e. recording the counting rate at fixed time intervals. At these energies, transient signals due to local (e.g. Forbush Decreases) and cosmological (e.g. Gamma Ray Bursts) phenomena are expected as a significant variation of the counting rate compared to the background. In this paper the performance of the ARGO-YBJ detector operating in scaler …
Upper limit on the cosmic-ray photon flux above 1019 eV using the surface detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory
2008
A method is developed to search for air showers initiated by photons using data recorded by the surface detector of the Auger Observatory. The approach is based on observables sensitive to the longitudinal shower development, the signal risetime and the curvature of the shower front. Applying this method to the data, upper limits on the flux of photons of 3.8 x 10-3, 2.5 x 10-3; and 2.2 x 10-3 km-2 sr-1 yr-1 above 1019 eV, 2 x 1019 eV; and 4 x 1019 eV are derived, with corresponding limits on the fraction of photons being 2.0%, 5.1%, and 31% (all limits at 95% c.l.). These photon limits disfavor certain exotic models of sources of cosmic rays. The results also show that the approach adopted…
The Status of the ARGO Experiment at YBJ
2007
The ARGO-YBJ experiment, located at Yangbajing, Tibet, China, performed by a wide Sino-Italian collaboration, is designed to study cosmic rays, sub-TeV gamma ray sources and GeV Gamma Ray Burst (GRB) emission in the northern hemisphere, by means of detecting small size EAS (Extensive Air Shower) using a full coverage RPC (Resistive Plate Chamber) carpet. The central carpet of the detector is installed and put into operation to date, with 1900 m^2 of the carpet already operating since December 2004. With a trigger multiplicity of ≥60 hits, corresponding to a primary mode energy of 2 TeV, the angular resolution of EAS measurements is < 1 degree for showers with more than 500 recorded hits. We…
Layout and performance of RPC used in the Argo-YBJ experiment
2006
The layout of the RPCs, used in the Argo-YBJ experiment to image with a high space-time granularity the atmospheric shower, is described in this paper. The detector has been assembled to provide both digital and analog informations in order to cover a wide particle density range with a time accuracy of 1 ns. The experimental results obtained operating the chambers in streamer mode at sea level with a standard gas mixture are presented. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Software Timing Calibration of the ARGO-YBJ Detector
2009
The ARGO-YBJ experiment is mainly devoted to search for astronomical gamma sources. The arrival direction of air showers is reconstructed thanks to the times measured by the pixels of the detector. Therefore, the timing calibration of the detector pixels is crucial in order to get the best angular resolution and pointing accuracy. Because of the large number of pixels a hardware timing calibration is practically impossible. Therefore an off-line software calibration has been adopted. Here, the details of the procedure and the results are presented. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Observation of the cosmic ray moon shadowing effect with the ARGO-YBJ experiment
2011
Cosmic rays are hampered by the Moon and a deficit in its direction is expected (the so-called Moon shadow). The Moon shadow is an important tool to determine the performance of an air shower array. Indeed, the westward displacement of the shadow center, due to the bending effect of the geomagnetic field on the propagation of cosmic rays, allows the setting of the absolute rigidity scale of the primary particles inducing the showers recorded by the detector. In addition, the shape of the shadow permits to determine the detector point spread function, while the position of the deficit at high energies allows the evaluation of its absolute pointing accuracy. In this paper we present the obser…
I raggi cosmici: cosa sono, da dove provengono, che messaggio portano.
2009
Una pioggia continua di oltre 100 particelle al secondo ci colpisce e ci attraversa, in ogni luogo della Terra, in ogni istante della nostra vita. Si tratta dei raggi cosmici che pervadono l’universo e colpiscono la Terra in modo isotropo (senza alcuna direzione privilegiata) proveniendo dal cosmo, e verosimilmente sia dall’interno che dall’esterno della nostra Galassia. La loro energia è estremamente variabile, ma più è grande, meno frequenti essi sono. Essi contengono dei messaggi la cui interpretazione ci consentirebbe di conoscere una grande messe di informazioni sui fenomeni che avvengono nello spazio e che coinvolgono la nascita, la formazione e la morte delle stelle e degli altri cor…
Correlation of the highest-energy cosmic rays with the positions of nearby active galactic nuclei
2008
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…
Observation of the suppression of the flux of cosmic rays above 4x10^19eV
2008
The energy spectrum of cosmic rays above 2.5 × 10¹⁸ eV, derived from 20,000 events recorded at the Pierre Auger Observatory, is described. The spectral index γ of the particle flux, J ∝ E-γ, at energies between 4 × 10¹⁸ eV and 4 × 10¹⁹ eV is 2.69 ± 0.02(stat) ± 0.06(syst), steepening to 4.2 ± 0.4(stat) ± 0.06(syst) at higher energies. The hypothesis of a single power law is rejected with a significance greater than 6 standard deviations. The data are consistent with the prediction by Greisen and by Zatsepin and Kuz'min.