Search for Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays from Space -- The JEM-EUSO Program

Abstract

The origin and nature of Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECRs) remain unsolved in contemporary astroparticle physics. To give an answer to these questions is rather challenging because of the extremely low flux of a few per km${}^2$ per century at extreme energies (i.e. E $>$ 5$\times$10${}^{19}$ eV). The central objective of the JEM-EUSO program, Joint Experiment Missions for Extreme Universe Space Observatory, is the realisation of an ambitious space-based mission devoted to UHECR science. A super-wide-field telescope will look down from space onto the night sky to detect UV photons emitted from air showers generated by UHECRs in the atmosphere. The JEM-EUSO program includes several missions from ground (EUSO-TA), from stratospheric balloons (EUSO-Balloon, EUSO-SPB1, EUSO-SPB2), and from space (TUS, Mini-EUSO) employing fluorescence detectors to demonstrate the UHECR observation from space and prepare the large size missions K-EUSO and POEMMA. We review the scientifical objectives associated with the developing projects of the JEM-EUSO program and the technological achievements allowing them.

References in corpus (5)

• Space Debris detection and tracking with the techniques of cosmic ray physics
• EUSO-TA ground based fluorescence detector: analysis of the detected events
• Mini-EUSO engineering model: tests in open-sky condition
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• A More Complete Phenomenology of Tau Lepton Induced Air Showers

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Weather Research and Forecasting) model and radiative methods for cloud top height retrieval along the EUSO-SPB1 trajectory