Related papers: Highlights from the Pierre Auger Observatory
The Pierre Auger Southern Observatory in Argentina has begun taking data as it is being developed up to a final enclosed area of 3000 square kilometres. A key aspect of the project is to provide information on the origin of the highest…
The Pierre Auger Observatory has been designed to study the highest-energy cosmic rays in nature (E > 10^{18.5} eV). The determination of their arrival direction, energy and composition is performed by the analysis of the atmospheric…
The origins of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) remain an open question. Several attempts have been made to cross-correlate the arrival directions of the UHECRs with catalogs of potential sources, but no definite conclusion has been…
(abridged) The Pierre Auger Collaboration has reported 27 Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Ray Events (UHECRs) with energies above 56 EeV and well determined arrival directions as of 2007 August 31. They find that the arrival directions are not…
Determining anisotropies in the arrival directions of cosmic rays at the highest energy is an important task in astrophysics. It is common and useful to partition the sky into spherical harmonics as a measure of anisotropy. The two lowest…
I summarize the discovery potential for physics beyond the electroweak scale at the Pierre Auger Observatory. This observatory is designed to study ultra-high energy cosmic rays with unprecedented precision, with the primary goal of…
The Pierre Auger Observatory has a unique potential to search for ultra-high energy photons (above ~1 EeV). First experimental limits on photons were obtained during construction of the southern part of the Observatory. Remarkably, already…
We report on an observation of the difference between northern and southern skies of the ultrahigh energy cosmic ray energy spectrum with a significance of ${\sim}8\sigma$. We use measurements from the two largest…
The questions about the origin and type of cosmic particles are not only fascinating for scientists in astrophysics, but also for young enthusiastic high school students. To familiarize them with research in astroparticle physics, the…
The recent results of the Pierre Auger Observatory on the possible correlation of Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays events and several nearby discrete sources could be the starting point of a new era with charged particles astronomy. In this…
The Offline software framework for data analysis of the Pierre Auger Observatory is a set of computational tools developed to cater to the needs of a large and geographically dispersed collaboration established to measure the spectrum,…
We present the results of an analysis of the large angular scale distribution of the arrival directions of cosmic rays with energy above 4 EeV detected at the Pierre Auger Observatory including for the first time events with zenith angle…
The Pierre Auger Observatory is the largest extensive air shower detector. Based on a hybrid system, this experiment measures the longitudinal shower development and the particles at the ground. This detection system allows the extraction…
Reasons for the current interest in cosmic rays above 10^19 eV are described. The latest results on the energy spectrum, arrival direction distribution and mass composition of cosmic rays are reviewed, including data that were reported…
Ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) are the highest energy messengers of the present universe, with energies up to $10^{20}$ eV. Studies of astrophysical particles (nuclei, electrons, neutrinos and photons) at their highest observed…
The energy spectrum and mass composition of ultra-high energy cosmic rays inferred at the Pierre Auger Observatory are used to derive a benchmark scenario for the emission mechanisms at play in extragalactic accelerators as well as for…
The determination of the mass composition of the highest energy cosmic rays is one of the greatest challenges in cosmic ray experiments. The highest energy cosmic rays are only detected indirectly because of their very low flux. Using the…
Extensive air showers initiated by ultra-high energy cosmic rays are sensitive to the details of hadronic interactions models, so we present the main results obtained using the data of the Pierre Auger Observatory. The depth at which the…
Recent precision measurements of the Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECR) arrival directions, spectrum and parameters related to the mass of the primary particle have been done by the HiRes, Pierre Auger and Telescope Array (TA)…
Several explanations for the existence of Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECR) invoke the idea that they originate from the decay of massive particles created in the reheating following inflation. It has been suggested that the decay…