Extremely high energy cosmic rays and the Auger Observatory
Abstract
Over the last 30 years or so, a handful of events observed in ground-based cosmic ray detectors seem to have opened a new window in the field of high-energy astrophysics. These events have energies exceeding 5x10**19 eV (the region of the so-called Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin spectral cutoff); they seem to come from no known astrophysical source; their chemical composition is mostly unknown; no conventional accelerating mechanism is considered as being able to explain their production and propagation to earth. Only a dedicated detector can bring in the high-quality and statistically significant data needed to solve this long-lasting puzzle: this is the aim of the Auger Observatory project around which a world-wide collaboration is being mobilized.
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/9605087,
title = {Extremely high energy cosmic rays and the Auger Observatory},
author = {Murat Boratav},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/9605087},
year = {2010}
}
Comments
14 pages, no figures, Latex, to be published in Proc. of the 7th Int. Workshop on Neutrino Telescopes (Venice 27/2-1/3 1996)