Related papers: AugerPrime: Status and first results
The Pierre Auger Observatory detects the highest energy cosmic rays. Calorimetric measurements of extensive air showers induced by cosmic rays are performed with a fluorescence detector. Thus, one of the main challenges is the atmospheric…
The Pierre Auger Collaboration intends to extend the energy range of its southern observatory in Argentina for high quality data from 0.1 to 3 EeV. The extensions, described in accompanying papers, include three additional fluorescence…
The Pierre Auger Observatory is the most sensitive instrument to detect photons with energies above $10^{17}$ eV. It measures extensive air showers generated by ultra high energy cosmic rays using a hybrid technique that exploits the…
The southern Pierre Auger Observatory is presently under construction in Malargue, Mendoza, Argentina. It combines two complementary air shower observation techniques; the detection of particles at ground and the observation of associated…
The Pierre Auger Observatory is planned to be upgraded so that the energy spectrum of cosmic rays can be studied down to 0.1 EeV and the muon component of showers can be determined. The former will lead to a spectrum measured by one…
Radio-detection is a mature technique that has gained large momentum over the past decades. Its physical detection principle is mainly driven by the electromagnetic part of the shower, and is therefore not too sensitive to uncertainties on…
The sources of the observed ultra-high energy cosmic rays must also generate ultra-high energy neutrinos. Deep inelastic scattering of these neutrinos with nucleons on Earth probe center-of-mass energies $\sqrt{s} \sim 100$ TeV, well beyond…
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…
Several methods can be used to perform statistical inference of primary composition of cosmic rays measured with water Cerenkov detectors as those in use at the Pierre Auger Southern Observatory. In the present work we assess the impact of…
We report a measurement of the flux of cosmic rays with unprecedented precision and statistics using data from the Pierre Auger Observatory. Based on fluorescence observations in coincidence with at least one station of the surface detector…
The Auger Engineering Radio Array (AERA) is an enhancement of the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina. Covering about View the $17\,$km$^2$, AERA is the world-largest antenna array for cosmic-ray observation. It consists of more than 150…
The Pierre Auger Observatory is a hybrid detector for cosmic rays with E > 1EeV. From the gathered data we estimated the proton-proton cross-section at sqrt(s) = 55 TeV and tested other features of the hadronic interaction models, which use…
Extensive air showers are complex objects, resulting of billions of particle reactions initiated by single cosmic ray at ultra-high-energy. Their characteristics are sensitive both to the mass of the primary cosmic ray and to the details of…
We explore the feasibility of estimating primary cosmic ray composition at ultra high energies from the sum of muon, electron and photon densities and the depth of maximum of extensive air showers detected by the Auger Observatory. From the…
The Pierre Auger Collaboration has embraced the concept of open access to their research data since its foundation, with the aim of giving access to the widest possible community. A gradual process of release began as early as 2007 when 1%…
In this contribution, we present the status and first data from the Radio Detector (RD) at the Pierre Auger Observatory, consisting of $1660$ radio antennas deployed across the $3000$ km$^2$ surface detector array. These antennas measure…
The Pierre Auger Observatory is a hybrid detector for ultra-high energy cosmic rays. It combines a surface array to measure secondary particles at ground level together with a fluorescence detector to measure the development of air showers…
We report on studies of the composition of ultra high energy cosmic rays with the Pierre Auger Observatory. The detection of longitudinal air shower profiles with the fluorescence detector is described and the measurement of the average…
The origin and nature of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) are one of the most intriguing mysteries in particle astrophysics and astronomy. The two largest observatories, the Pierre Auger Observatory and the Telescope Array Experiment,…
Ultrahigh energy cosmic ray air showers probe particle physics at energies beyond the reach of accelerators. Here we introduce a new method to test hadronic interaction models without relying on the absolute energy calibration, and apply it…