The impact of the air-fluorescence yield on the reconstructed shower parameters of ultra-high energy cosmic rays

Abstract

An accurate knowledge of the fluorescence yield and its dependence on atmospheric properties such as pressure, temperature or humidity is essential to obtain a reliable measurement of the primary energy of cosmic rays in experiments using the fluorescence technique. In this work, several sets of fluorescence yield data (i.e. absolute value and quenching parameters) are described and compared. A simple procedure to study the effect of the assumed fluorescence yield on the reconstructed shower parameters (energy and shower maximum depth) as a function of the primary features has been developed. As an application, the effect of water vapor and temperature dependence of the collisional cross section on the fluorescence yield and its impact on the reconstruction of primary energy and shower maximum depth has been studied.

arXiv commentAccepted in Astroparticle Physics

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• The Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory
• On the absolute value of the air-fluorescence yield
• Nitrogen fluorescence in air for observing extensive air showers
• Description of Atmospheric Conditions at the Pierre Auger Observatory Using Meteorological Measurements and Models
• The effect of the Fluorescence Yield selection on the energy scales of Auger, HiRes and TA
• A Proposed Method for Measurement of Absolute Air Fluorescence Yield based on High Resolution Optical Emission Spectroscopy