Calibration of the Surface Array of the Pierre Auger Observatory

Abstract

The Pierre Auger Observatory is designed to study cosmic rays of the highest energies ($>10^{19}$ eV). The ground array of the Observatory will consist of 1600 water Cherenkov detectors deployed over 3000 km^2. The remoteness and large number of detectors require a robust, automatic self-calibration procedure. It relies on the measurement of the average charge collected by a photomultiplier tube from the Cherenkov light produced by a vertical and central through-going muon determined to 5 - 10% at the detector via a novel rate-based technique and to 3% precision through analysis of histograms of the charge distribution. The parameters needed for the calibration are measured every minute, allowing for an accurate determination of the signals recorded from extensive air showers produced by primary cosmic rays. The method also enables stable and uniform triggering conditions to be achieved.

8 pages, 6 figures

Cited by in corpus (14)

• Testing Hadronic Interactions at Ultrahigh Energies with Air Showers Measured by the Pierre Auger Observatory
• Ultrahigh Energy Neutrinos at the Pierre Auger Observatory
• Layered water Cherenkov detector for the study of ultra high energy cosmic rays
• Measurement of the Depth of Maximum of Air-Shower Profiles with energies between $10^{18.5}$ and $10^{20}$ eV using the Surface Detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory and Deep Learning
• Calibration of the underground muon detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory
• First measurements of periodicities and anisotropies of cosmic ray flux observed with a water-Cherenkov detector at the Marambio Antarctic base
• Studies on the response of a water-Cherenkov detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory to atmospheric muons using an RPC hodoscope
• Search for a diffuse flux of photons with energies above tens of PeV at the Pierre Auger Observatory
• The gamma/hadron discriminator $LCm$ in realistic air shower array experiments
• Scaler rates from the Pierre Auger Observatory: a new proxy of solar activity
• A composition dependent energy scale and the determination of the cosmic ray primary mass in the ankle region
• Azimuthal fluctuations and number of muons at the ground in muon-depleted proton air showers at PeV energies
• An Improved Method of Estimating the Uncertainty of Air-Shower Size at Ultra-High Energies
• Neutrino Detection with the Surface Array of the Pierre Auger Observatory