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Search for neutral primary cosmic-rays at the Pierre Auger Observatory

Pierog, Tanguy ORCID iD icon 1
1 Institut für Astroteilchenphysik (IAP), Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT)

Abstract (englisch):

The large majority of high energy cosmic rays reaching Earth and producing air showers are charged nuclei which are difficult to use to identify the source of high energy particles in the Universe. Indeed the galactic and extra-galactic magnetic fields bend their trajectory due to their charge. Ideally the detection of neutral particles will resolve this problem. Both photons and neutrinos are expected to be produced by the same source of cosmic rays but high energy photons have a very limited mean free path due to a high cross-section with background radiation but can be produced by exotic particle decay. Neutrinos are very difficult to detect on Earth due to the very low interaction cross-section. Nevertheless, it is possible to use the largest cosmic ray experiment, namely the Pierre Auger Observatory, to try to detect these type of particles. It is the most sensitive detector to primary photons with energies above ~0.2 EeV. It measures extensive air showers using a hybrid technique that combines a fluorescence detector (FD) with a surface detectors (SD) array composed of 1660 water-Cherenkov detectors. The signatures of a photon-induced air shower are a larger atmospheric depth at the shower maximum (Xmax) and a steeper lateral distribution function, along with a lower number of muons with respect to the bulk of hadron-induced background. ... mehr


Zugehörige Institution(en) am KIT Institut für Astroteilchenphysik (IAP)
Publikationstyp Vortrag
Publikationsmonat/-jahr 03.2022
Sprache Englisch
Identifikator KITopen-ID: 1000152173
HGF-Programm 51.13.03 (POF IV, LK 01) Kosmische Strahlung Auger
Veranstaltung 56th Rencontres de Moriond - Very High Energy Phenomena in the Universe (2022), La Thuile, Italien, 19.03.2022 – 26.03.2022
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