Energy Estimation Of Cosmic Rays With The Engineering Radio Array Of The Pierre Auger Observatory

Energy Estimation of Cosmic Rays with the Engineering Radio Array of the Pierre Auger Observatory

The Auger Engineering Radio Array (AERA) is part of the Pierre Auger Observatory and is used to detect the radio emission of cosmic-ray air showers. These observations are compared to the data of the surface detector stations of the Observatory, which provide well-calibrated information on the cosmic-ray energies and arrival directions. The response of the radio stations in the 30 to 80MHz regime has been thoroughly calibrated to enable the reconstruction of the incoming electric field. For the latter, the energy density is determined from the radio pulses at each observer position and is interpolated using a two dimensional function that takes into account signal asymmetries due to interference between the geomagnetic and charge excess emission components. We found that the spatial integral over the signal distribution gives a direct measurement of the energy transferred from the primary cosmic ray into radio emission in the AERA frequency range. We measure 15.8MeV of radiation energy for a 1 EeV air shower arriving perpendicularly to the geomagnetic field. This radiation energy - corrected for geometrical effects - is used as a cosmic-ray energy estimator. Performing an absolute energy calibration against the surface-detector information, we observe that this radio-energy estimator scales quadratically with the cosmic-ray energy as expected for coherent emission. Finally we find an energy resolution of the radio reconstruction of 22% for the data set and 17% for a high-quality subset containing only events with at least five radio stations with signal.

Cosmic Rays and Particle Physics

Encyclopedia Of Cosmology, The - Set 2: Frontiers In Cosmology (In 3 Volumes)

The second set of The Encyclopedia of Cosmology, in three volumes, continues this major, long-lasting, seminal reference at the graduate student level laid out by the most prominent researchers in the general field of cosmology. Together, these volumes will be a comprehensive review of the most important current topics in cosmology, discussing the important concepts and current status in each field, covering both theory and observation.These three volumes are edited by Dr Giovanni Fazio from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, with each volume authored or edited by specialists in the area: Modified Gravity by Claudia de Rham and Andrew Tolley (Imperial College), Neutrino Physics and Astrophysics edited by Floyd Stecker (NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center), Black Holes edited by Zoltan Haiman (Columbia University). These volumes follow the earlier publication in 2020 of The Encyclopedia of Cosmology, which comprises the following four volumes: Galaxy Formation and Evolution by Rennan Barkana (Tel Aviv University), Numerical Simulations in Cosmology edited by Kentaro Nagamine (Osaka University / University of Nevada), Dark Energy by Shinji Tsujikawa (Tokyo University of Science), and Dark Matter by Jihn E Kim (Seoul National University). The Encyclopedia aims to provide an overview of the most important topics in cosmology and serve as an up-to-date reference in astrophysics.