Reconstruction of Longitudinal Profiles of Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Ray Showers from Fluorescence and Cherenkov Light Measurements

Abstract

We present a new method for the reconstruction of the longitudinal profile of extensive air showers induced by ultra-high energy cosmic rays. In contrast to the typically considered shower size profile, this method employs directly the ionization energy deposit of the shower particles in the atmosphere. Due to universality of the energy spectra of electrons and positrons, both fluorescence and Cherenkov light can be used simultaneously as signal to infer the shower profile from the detected light. The method is based on an analytic least-square solution for the estimation of the shower profile from the observed light signal. Furthermore, the extrapolation of the observed part of the profile with a Gaisser-Hillas function is discussed and the total statistical uncertainty of shower parameters like total energy and shower maximum is calculated.

arXiv commentaccepted by NIM A

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Cited by in corpus (36)

• The Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory
• Observation of the suppression of the flux of cosmic rays above 4x10^19eV
• Measurement of the Depth of Maximum of Extensive Air Showers above 10^18 eV
• Measurement of the energy spectrum of cosmic rays above 10^18 eV using the Pierre Auger Observatory
• Measurements of the Cosmic Ray Composition with Air Shower Experiments
• Depth of Maximum of Air-Shower Profiles at the Pierre Auger Observatory: Measurements at Energies above 10^17.8 eV
• The Fluorescence Detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory
• Cosmic Rays from the Knee to the Highest Energies
• Measurement of the cosmic-ray energy spectrum above $2.5\times 10^{18}$ eV using the Pierre Auger Observatory
• Ultrahigh Energy Cosmic Rays
• Upper limit on the cosmic-ray photon fraction at EeV energies from the Pierre Auger Observatory
• Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays from Black Hole Jets of Radio Galaxies
• A Study of the Effect of Molecular and Aerosol Conditions in the Atmosphere on Air Fluorescence Measurements at the Pierre Auger Observatory
• Reconstruction of inclined air showers detected with the Pierre Auger Observatory
• The exposure of the hybrid detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory
• High-Energy Cosmic Rays and the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin Effect
• Measurement of the cosmic ray energy spectrum using hybrid events of the Pierre Auger Observatory
• Measurement of the cosmic ray spectrum above $4\times 10^{18}$ eV using inclined events detected with the Pierre Auger Observatory
• The Rapid Atmospheric Monitoring System of the Pierre Auger Observatory
• Measurement of the average shape of longitudinal profiles of cosmic-ray air showers at the Pierre Auger Observatory
• A Parametrization of Cosmic Ray Shower Profiles Based on Shower Width
• Composition Studies with the Pierre Auger Observatory
• Atmospheric multiple scattering of fluorescence and Cherenkov light emitted by extensive air showers
• The impact of the air-fluorescence yield on the reconstructed shower parameters of ultra-high energy cosmic rays
• Asymmetry of the angular distribution of Cherenkov photons of extensive air showers induced by the geomagnetic field
• An extended universality of electron distributions in cosmic ray showers of high energies and its application
• Intermediate models for longitudinal profiles of cosmic showers
• The non-linearity between <ln A> and <Xmax> induced by the acceptance of fluorescence telescopes
• Identification of the primary mass of inclined cosmic ray showers from depth of maximum and number of muons parameters
• Parametrization of the angular distribution of Cherenkov light in air showers
• Investigation of Hadronic Interactions at Ultra-High Energies with the Pierre Auger Observatory
• Relevance of the fluorescence radiation in VHE gamma-ray observations with the Cherenkov technique
• The effect of the Fluorescence Yield selection on the energy scales of Auger, HiRes and TA
• Measurement of the energy spectrum of cosmic rays at the highest energies using data from Pierre Auger Observatory
• Simulation and Parameterization of Longitudinal Development in Extensive Air Showers for Different Hadronic Interaction Models
• Method of EAS's Cherenkov and fluorescent light separation using silicon photomultipliers