A new method for reconstructing the muon lateral distribution with an array of segmented counters
arXiv:1411.7649 · doi:10.1016/j.astropartphys.2014.11.007
Abstract
Although the origin of ultra high energy cosmic rays is still unknown, significant progress has been achieved in last decades with the construction of large arrays that are currently taking data. One of the most important pieces of information comes from the chemical composition of primary particles. It is well known that the muon content of air showers generated by the interaction of cosmic rays with the atmosphere is rather sensitive to primary mass. Therefore, the measurement of the number of muons at ground level is an essential ingredient to infer the cosmic ray mass composition. In this work we present a new method for reconstructing the muon lateral distribution function with an array of segmented counters. The energy range from .4 to 2.5 EeV is considered. For a triangular array spaced at 750 m we found that 450 m is the optimal distance to evaluate the number of muons. The corresponding statistical and systematic uncertainties of the new and of a previous reconstruction methods are compared. Since the statistical uncertainty of the new reconstruction is less than in the original one, the power to discriminate between heavy and light cosmic ray primaries is enhanced. The detector dynamic range is also extended in the new reconstruction, so events falling closer to a detector can be included in composition studies.
Accepted for publication in Astroparticle Physics
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Cited by in corpus (11)
- Prototype muon detectors for the AMIGA component of the Pierre Auger Observatory
- Muon Counting using Silicon Photomultipliers in the AMIGA detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory
- Reconstruction of air shower muon densities using segmented counters with time resolution
- Calibration of the underground muon detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory
- Design and implementation of the AMIGA embedded system for data acquisition
- Estimation of the number of muons with muon counters
- Development and validation of the signal simulation for the underground muon detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory
- Composition determination of cosmic rays from the muon content of the showers
- Reconstruction of air shower muon lateral distribution functions using integrator and binary modes of underground muon detectors
- A new air-shower observable to constrain hadronic interaction models
- A method to reconstruct the muon lateral distribution with an array of segmented counters with time resolution