Searches for Ultra-High-Energy Photons at the Pierre Auger Observatory

Abstract

The Pierre Auger Observatory, being the largest air-shower experiment in the world, offers an unprecedented exposure to neutral particles at the highest energies. Since the start of data taking more than 18 years ago, various searches for ultra-high-energy (UHE, $E\gtrsim 10^{17}\text{eV}$) photons have been performed: either for a diffuse flux of UHE photons, for point sources of UHE photons or for UHE photons associated with transient events like gravitational wave events. In the present paper, we summarize these searches and review the current results obtained using the wealth of data collected by the Pierre Auger Observatory.

Review article accepted for publication in Universe (special issue on ultra-high energy photons)

References in corpus (16)

• GW170817: Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Neutron Star Inspiral
• Multi-messenger Observations of a Binary Neutron Star Merger
• GWTC-2: Compact Binary Coalescences Observed by LIGO and Virgo During the First Half of the Third Observing Run
• Search for ultra-high energy photons using air showers
• AugerPrime: the Pierre Auger Observatory Upgrade
• The Concepts of "Age" and "Universality" in Cosmic Ray Showers
• KASCADE-Grande Limits on the Isotropic Diffuse Gamma-Ray Flux between 100 TeV and 1 EeV
• Ultrahigh-energy neutrino follow-up of Gravitational Wave events GW150914 and GW151226 with the Pierre Auger Observatory
• A search for photons with energies above $2\times 10^{17}$ eV using hybrid data from the low-energy extensions of the Pierre Auger Observatory
• A search for point sources of EeV photons
• A targeted search for point sources of EeV photons with the Pierre Auger Observatory
• Reconstruction of Events Recorded with the Surface Detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory
• Hunting super-heavy dark matter with ultra-high energy photons
• Characteristics of geomagnetic cascading of ultra-high energy photons at the southern and northern sites of the Pierre Auger Observatory
• Diffuse flux of ultra-high energy photons from cosmic-ray interactions in the disk of the Galaxy and implications for the search for decaying super-heavy dark matter
• A search for ultra high energy neutrinos from TXS 0506+056 using the Pierre Auger Observatory

Cited by in corpus (8)

• White Paper and Roadmap for Quantum Gravity Phenomenology in the Multi-Messenger Era
• Gravitational wave search through electromagnetic telescopes
• Super heavy dark matter origin of the PeV neutrino event: KM3-230213A
• Search for a diffuse flux of photons with energies above tens of PeV at the Pierre Auger Observatory
• Single top quark production at ultra-high energies
• Photon-likeness of hadron showers and impact of Lorentz boosting
• Readdressing the contribution of photonuclear reactions to the muon content of extensive air showers: a heuristic approach
• Towards Searching for Photons with Energies beyond the PeV Range from Galactic PeVatrons