Related papers: Improving photon-hadron discrimination based on co…

Very high energy gamma-ray astronomy based on the measurement of air shower particles at ground-level has only recently been established as a viable approach, complementing the well established air Cherenkov technique. This approach…

The existence of cosmic ray particles up to the ultra-high energy limit (> 10^20 eV) is now beyond any doubt. The detection of cosmic particles with such energies imposes a challenge for the comprehension of their sources and nature. On one…

We consider a hypothetical observatory of ultra-high energy cosmic rays consisting of two surface detector arrays that measure independently electromagnetic and muon signals induced by air showers. Using the constant intensity cut method,…

The diffuse, unresolved sky provides most of the photons that the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) receives, yet remains poorly understood. HST Archival Legacy program SKYSURF aims to measure the 0.2-1.6 $\mu$m sky surface brightness (sky-SB)…

In this thesis, an introduction to the Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Ray (UHECR) field is given, including air shower physics, UHECR astrophysics, and experimental techniques. The current questions in UHECR physics are mentioned, along with the…

Using a combination of a preshower detector and a charged particle veto, it is shown that the neural network method is able to provide satisfactory discrimination between photons and hadrons in the case of extremely high particle density…

The High-Altitude Water Cherenkov experiment (HAWC) observatory is located 4100 meters above sea level. HAWC is able to detect secondary particles from extensive air showers (EAS) initiated in the interaction of a primary particle (either a…

We analyze the conditions that enable acceleration of particles to ultra-high energies, ~10^{20} eV (UHECRs). We show that broad band photon data recently provided by WMAP, ISOCAM, Swift and Fermi satellites, yield constraints on the…

This paper presents the highlights from the recent measurements of the energy spectrum, mass composition, and arrival directions of the ultra-high energy ($> 10^{17}$ eV = 0.1 EeV) cosmic rays (UHECR) by the Pierre Auger Observatory. The…

We study the spectrum and average mass composition of cosmic rays with primary energies between 10^{17} eV and 10^{18} eV using a hybrid detector consisting of the High Resolution Fly's Eye (HiRes) prototype and the MIA muon array.…

The Search for Hidden Particles (SHiP) Collaboration has shown that the CERN SPS accelerator with its 400 $\mathrm{\small GeV/c}$ proton beam offers a unique opportunity to explore the Hidden Sector. The proposed experiment is an intensity…

In early 2010, the Large Hadron Collider forward (LHCf) experiment measured very forward neutral particle spectra in LHC proton-proton collisions. From a limited data set taken under the best beam conditions (low beam-gas background and low…

Using data from the HEGRA air shower array, taken in the period from April 1998 to March 2000, upper limits on the ratio I_gamma /I_CR of the diffuse photon flux I_gamma to the hadronic cosmic ray flux I_CR are determined for the energy…

The Heavy Photon Search experiment took its first data in a 2015 engineering run using a 1.056 GeV, 50 nA electron beam provided by CEBAF at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, searching for an electro-produced dark photon.…

One way to treat the infrared divergences of the electroweak Next-to-Leading-Order (NLO) differential cross sections to parity-violating (PV) electron-proton scattering is by adding soft-photon emission contribution. Although more physical,…

The muonic and electromagnetic components of air showers are sensitive to the mass of the primary cosmic particle. The sizes of the components can be measured with particle detectors on ground, and the electromagnetic component in addition…

Measurements at 100 TeV and above are an important goal for the next generation of high energy gamma-ray astronomy experiments to solve the still open problem of the origin of galactic cosmic rays. The most natural experimental solution to…

The predictions of hadronic interaction models for cosmic-ray induced air showers contain inherent uncertainties due to limitations of available accelerator data and theoretical understanding in the required energy and rapidity regime.…

Ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) beyond the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin (GZK) cut-off provide us with a unique opportunity to understand the universe at extreme energies. Secondary GZK photons and GZK neutrinos associated with the same…

We discuss the electromagnetic collisions of high energy protons, pions and kaons with atmospheric nuclei. In particular, we use the equivalent photon approximation to estimate (i) the diffractive collisions where the projectile scatters…