169 research outputs found
The Auger Raman Lidar: several years of continuous observations
The Raman lidar at the Central (Raman) Laser Facility of the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina, has been operational since September 2013. In this paper, the Auger Raman Lidar performance is discussed in terms of the data quality for the assessment of the aerosol contribution to the atmospheric UV optical transparency, and how much this is important for the reconstruction of the UHECR properties, based on the Auger Fluorescence Detector observations
The ARCADE Raman Lidar System for the Cherenkov Telescope Array
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is the next generation of ground-based
very high energy gamma-ray instruments; the facility will be organized in two
arrays, one for each hemisphere. The atmospheric calibration of the CTA
telescopes is a critical task. The atmosphere affects the measured Cherenkov
yield in several ways: the air-shower development itself, the variation of the
Cherenkov angle with altitude, the loss of photons due to scattering and
absorption of Cherenkov light out of the camera field-of-view and the
scattering of photons into the camera. In this scenario, aerosols are the most
variable atmospheric component in time and space and therefore need a
continuous monitoring. Lidars are among the most used instruments in
atmospheric physics to measure the aerosol attenuation profiles of light. The
ARCADE Lidar system is a very compact and portable Raman Lidar system that has
been built within the FIRB 2010 grant and is currently taking data in Lamar,
Colorado. The ARCADE Lidar is proposed to operate at the CTA sites with the
goal of making a first survey of the aerosol conditions of the selected site
and to use it as a calibrated benchmark for the other Lidars that will be
installed on site. It is proposed for CTA that the ARCADE Lidar will be first
upgraded in Italy and then tested in parallel to a Lidar of the EARLINET
network in L'Aquila. Upgrades include the addition of the water vapour Raman
channel to the receiver and the use of new and better performing electronics.
It is proposed that the upgraded system will travel to and characterize both
CTA sites, starting from the first selected site in 2016
Tropospheric ozone column retrieval from OMI data by means of neural networks: a validation exercise with ozone soundings over Europe
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Measurement of the cosmic ray spectrum above eV using inclined events detected with the Pierre Auger Observatory
A measurement of the cosmic-ray spectrum for energies exceeding
eV is presented, which is based on the analysis of showers
with zenith angles greater than detected with the Pierre Auger
Observatory between 1 January 2004 and 31 December 2013. The measured spectrum
confirms a flux suppression at the highest energies. Above
eV, the "ankle", the flux can be described by a power law with
index followed by
a smooth suppression region. For the energy () at which the
spectral flux has fallen to one-half of its extrapolated value in the absence
of suppression, we find
eV.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO
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 80 MHz regime has been thoroughly calibrated to enable the reconstruction of
the incoming electric field. For the latter, the energy deposit per area 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.
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 15.8 MeV 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. 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.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO
Measurement of the Radiation Energy in the Radio Signal of Extensive Air Showers as a Universal Estimator of Cosmic-Ray Energy
We measure the energy emitted by extensive air showers in the form of radio
emission in the frequency range from 30 to 80 MHz. Exploiting the accurate
energy scale of the Pierre Auger Observatory, we obtain a radiation energy of
15.8 \pm 0.7 (stat) \pm 6.7 (sys) MeV for cosmic rays with an energy of 1 EeV
arriving perpendicularly to a geomagnetic field of 0.24 G, scaling
quadratically with the cosmic-ray energy. A comparison with predictions from
state-of-the-art first-principle calculations shows agreement with our
measurement. The radiation energy provides direct access to the calorimetric
energy in the electromagnetic cascade of extensive air showers. Comparison with
our result thus allows the direct calibration of any cosmic-ray radio detector
against the well-established energy scale of the Pierre Auger Observatory.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DOI.
Supplemental material in the ancillary file
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