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Quantum mechanics is a field often considered very mathematical, abstract, and unintuitive. One way some instructors are hoping to help familiarize their students with these complex topics is to have the students see quantum effects in…
The Pierre Auger Observatory is a major international effort aiming at high-statistics study of highest energy cosmic rays. A general description of the experimental set-up and overall performance of the detector at first light are…
The properties of galactic cosmic rays are investigated with the KASCADE-Grande experiment in the energy range between $10^{14}$ and $10^{18}$ eV. Recent results are discussed. They concern mainly the all-particle energy spectrum and the…
I give a brief overview of cosmic ray physics, highlighting some key questions and how they will be addressed by new experiments.
The Global Cosmic-ray Observatory (GCOS) is a proposed large-scale observatory for studying ultra-high-energy cosmic particles, including ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs), photons, and neutrinos. Its primary goal is to characterise…
Investigations of the origin of cosmic rays are presented. Different methods are discussed: studies of cosmic gamma rays of energy from 30 MeV to about 10^15 eV (since photons point to their places of origin), studies of the mass…
Detectors for gamma-ray astronomy are complex: they often comprise multiple sub-systems and utilize new and/or custom-developed detector components and readout electronics. Gamma rays are typically not detected directly: ground-based…
Ultra high energy cosmic rays (UHECR) pose a problem either for particle physics or for astrophysics (or for both) by the unexpectedly high number of cosmic ray showers observed with energy above about 5x10^{19}eV, the…
An integrated approach has been developed to study radio signals induced by cosmic rays entering the Earth's atmosphere. An engineering array will be co-located with the infill array of the Pierre Auger Observatory. Our R&D effort includes…
High-energy cosmic rays, impinging on the atmosphere of the Earth initiate cascades of secondary particles, the extensive air showers. The electrons and positrons in the air shower emit electromagnetic radiation. This emission is detected…
Cosmic rays provide an unique approach to study hadronic interactions at high energies in the kinematic forward direction. The KASCADE air shower experiment was the first to conduct quantitative tests of hadronic interactions with air…
Measurements of Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays achieved remarkable progress in the last 10 years. Physicists, gathered from around the world in the symposium UHECR-2012 held at CERN on February 13-16 2012, reported their most up-to-date…
Solar and heliospheric cosmic rays provide a unique perspective in cosmic ray research: we can observe not only the particles, but also the properties of the plasmas in which the they are accelerated and propagate, using in situ and…
In the early years, cosmic rays contributed essentially to particle physics through the discovery of new particles. Will history repeat itself? As with the discovery of the charged pion, the recent discovery of a Higgs-like boson may…
The paper presents the design and qualification tests of an airborne experimental setup to determine cosmic ray-flux in the lower stratospheric regions of the earth's atmosphere. The concept of coincidence is implemented to preferentially…
Air showers, produced by the interaction of energetic cosmic rays with the atmosphere, are an excellent alternative to study particle physics at energies beyond any human-made particle accelerator. For that, it is necessary to identify…
Physicists have pondered the origin of cosmic rays for over a hundred years. However the last few years have seen an upsurge in the observation, progress in the theory and a genuine increase in the importance attached to the topic due to…
In this paper we describe the different software and hardware elements of a mini-telescope for the detection of cosmic rays and gamma-rays using the Cherenkov light emitted by their induced particle showers in the atmosphere. We estimate…
Radio emission from cosmic ray air showers has the potential to become an additional, cost-effective observing technique for cosmic ray research, being largely complementary to the well-established particle detector and air fluorescence…
The properties of strangelets are reviewed and two experiments searching for them in cosmic rays are described. The prospects for strangelets as ultra-high energy cosmic rays beyond the classical GZK-cutoff are discussed.