Related papers: 3D Reconstruction of Extensive Air Showers from Fl…
A key assumption in the reconstruction of extensive air showers using the air fluorescence technique is the hypothesis that fluorescence is proportional to energy deposition at all depths in the shower. This ansatz, along with the…
The discovery of extensive air showers by Rossi, Schmeiser, Bothe, Kolh\"orster and Auger at the end of the 1930s, facilitated by the coincidence technique of Bothe and Rossi, led to fundamental contributions in the field of cosmic ray…
The origin of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) is one of the intriguing mysteries in astroparticle physics. In order to identify their sources, we need precise knowledge of the mass composition of UHECRs. The direct detection of…
The shape of the longitudinal development of the showers generated in the atmosphere by very high energy cosmic ray particles encodes information about the mass composition of the flux, and about the properties of hadronic interactions that…
We report an investigation of the mass composition of cosmic rays with energies from 3 to 100 EeV (1 EeV=$10^{18}$ eV) using the distributions of the depth of shower maximum $X_\mathrm{max}$. The analysis relies on ${\sim}50,000$ events…
The average profiles of cosmic ray shower development as a function of atmospheric depth are measured for the first time with the Fluorescence Detectors at the Pierre Auger Observatory. The profile shapes are well reproduced by the…
The standard approach to densely reconstruct the motion in a volume of fluid is to inject high-contrast tracer particles and record their motion with multiple high-speed cameras. Almost all existing work processes the acquired multi-view…
We explore the sensitivity offered by a global network of cosmic ray detectors to a novel, unobserved phenomena: widely separated simultaneous extended air showers. Existing localized observatories work independently to observe individual…
The reconstruction of the energy and the depth of maximum $X_{\rm max}$ of an extensive air shower depends on the multiple scattering of fluorescence photons in the atmosphere. In this work, we explain how atmospheric aerosols, and…
Surface radio antenna-based measurements of cosmic-ray air showers present significant computational challenges in accurately reconstructing physics observables, in particular, the depth of shower maximum, X$_{max}$. State-of-the-art…
The combined data of Fluorescence and Surface Detectors of the Pierre Auger Observatory has recently provided the strongest constraints on the validity of predictions from current models of hadronic interactions. The unmodified predictions…
We present a full model of surface-detector responses to extensive air showers. The model is motivated by the principles of air-shower universality and can be applied to different types of surface detectors. Here we describe a…
Ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECR), of energy >10 EeV, arrive at the Earth regularly, but their sources, acceleration mechanisms, details of propagation through the universe, and particle composition remain mysteries. In addition, their…
The profile of the longitudinal development of showers produced by ultra-high energy cosmic rays carries information related to the interaction properties of the primary particles with atmospheric nuclei. In this work, we present the first…
The standard method to estimate the mass of a cosmic ray is the measurement of the atmospheric depth of the shower maximum ($X_\text{max}$). This depth is strongly correlated with the mass of the primary because it depends on the…
The current status and prospects of deducing the proton-air cross section from fluorescence telescope measurements of extensive air showers are discussed. As it is not possible to observe the point of first interaction, $X_ {\rm 1}$,…
We present a detailed statistical treatment of the energy calibration of hybrid air-shower detectors, which combine a surface detector array and a fluorescence detector, to obtain an unbiased estimate of the calibration curve. The special…
We present an improved method for the precise reconstruction of cosmic ray air showers above $10^{17}$ eV with sparse radio arrays. The method is based on the comparison of predictions for radio pulse shapes by CoREAS simulations to…
The determination of the primary energy of extensive air showers using the fluorescence detection technique requires an estimation of the energy carried away by particles that do not deposit all their energy in the atmosphere. This…
Atmospheric conditions, such as the pressure (P), temperature (T) or air density ($\rho \propto P/T$), affect the development of extended air showers initiated by energetic cosmic rays. We study the impact of the atmospheric variations on…