Bayesian analysis of the mass composition of Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays using Xmax data recorded at the Pierre Auger Observatory

Understanding the composition of Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECRs) at Earth is crucial to unveil their origin and propagation mechanisms, and it is thus one of the main current challenges in the field of Astroparticle Physics. This thesis is aimed to study the mass composition of UHECRs using data measured at the Pierre Auger Observatory in a Bayesian approach. An innovative method for composition analysis based on Bayesian statistics is developed. This is then applied to Auger data to infer the composition of UHECRs under different primary cosmic ray mass scenarios and assuming different hadronic interaction models. As a result a transition from intermediate to lighter masses from 0.63 EeV to 2 EeV is found. Above this energy the composition becomes heavier as energy increases. Using these results and the all particle spectrum measured at the Auger Observatory a first estimate of the proton flux is inferred and its astrophysical interpretations are discussed

Measurement of the cosmic ray spectrum above 4×10184{\times}10^{18} eV using inclined events detected with the Pierre Auger Observatory

A measurement of the cosmic-ray spectrum for energies exceeding $4{\times}10^{18}$ eV is presented, which is based on the analysis of showers with zenith angles greater than $60^{\circ}$ 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 $5.3{\times}10^{18}$ eV, the "ankle", the flux can be described by a power law $E^{-\gamma}$ with index $\gamma=2.70 \pm 0.02 \,\text{(stat)} \pm 0.1\,\text{(sys)}$ followed by a smooth suppression region. For the energy ($E_\text{s}$) at which the spectral flux has fallen to one-half of its extrapolated value in the absence of suppression, we find $E_\text{s}=(5.12\pm0.25\,\text{(stat)}^{+1.0}_{-1.2}\,\text{(sys)}){\times}10^{19}$ 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

Multiple Scenario Generation of Subsurface Models:Consistent Integration of Information from Geophysical and Geological Data throuh Combination of Probabilistic Inverse Problem Theory and Geostatistics

Neutrinos with energies above 1017 eV are detectable with the Surface Detector Array of the Pierre Auger Observatory. The identification is efficiently performed for neutrinos of all flavors interacting in the atmosphere at large zenith angles, as well as for Earth-skimming \u3c4 neutrinos with nearly tangential trajectories relative to the Earth. No neutrino candidates were found in 3c 14.7 years of data taken up to 31 August 2018. This leads to restrictive upper bounds on their flux. The 90% C.L. single-flavor limit to the diffuse flux of ultra-high-energy neutrinos with an E\u3bd-2 spectrum in the energy range 1.0 7 1017 eV -2.5 7 1019 eV is E2 dN\u3bd/dE\u3bd < 4.4 7 10-9 GeV cm-2 s-1 sr-1, placing strong constraints on several models of neutrino production at EeV energies and on the properties of the sources of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays

Gaia Focused Product Release: Sources from Service Interface Function image analysis Half a million new sources in omega Centauri

Context. Gaia’s readout window strategy is challenged by very dense fields in the sky. Therefore, in addition to standard Gaia observations, full Sky Mapper (SM) images were recorded for nine selected regions in the sky. A new software pipeline exploits these Service Interface Function (SIF) images of crowded fields (CFs), making use of the availability of the full two-dimensional (2D) information. This new pipeline produced half a million additional Gaia sources in the region of the omega Centauri (ω Cen) cluster, which are published with this Focused Product Release. We discuss the dedicated SIF CF data reduction pipeline, validate its data products, and introduce their Gaia archive table. Aims. Our aim is to improve the completeness of the Gaia source inventory in a very dense region in the sky, ω Cen. Methods. An adapted version of Gaia’s Source Detection and Image Parameter Determination software located sources in the 2D SIF CF images. These source detections were clustered and assigned to new SIF CF or existing Gaia sources by Gaia’s cross-match software. For the new sources, astrometry was calculated using the Astrometric Global Iterative Solution software, and photometry was obtained in the Gaia DR3 reference system. We validated the results by comparing them to the public Gaia DR3 catalogue and external Hubble Space Telescope data. Results. With this Focused Product Release, 526 587 new sources have been added to the Gaia catalogue in ω Cen. Apart from positions and brightnesses, the additional catalogue contains parallaxes and proper motions, but no meaningful colour information. While SIF CF source parameters generally have a lower precision than nominal Gaia sources, in the cluster centre they increase the depth of the combined catalogue by three magnitudes and improve the source density by a factor of ten. Conclusions. This first SIF CF data publication already adds great value to the Gaia catalogue. It demonstrates what to expect for the fourth Gaia catalogue, which will contain additional sources for all nine SIF CF regions.Financial institutions available on: 10.1051/0004-6361/202347270 (pp.18-22)6.5 Q1 JCR 20221.896 Q1 SJR 2023No data IDR 2023UE

Gaia Focused Product Release: Spatial distribution of two diffuse interstellar bands

Diffuse interstellar bands (DIBs) are absorption features seen in optical and infrared spectra of stars and extragalactic objects that are probably caused by large and complex molecules in the galactic interstellar medium (ISM). Here we investigate the Galactic distribution and properties of two DIBs identified in almost six million stellar spectra collected by the Gaia Radial Velocity Spectrometer. These measurements constitute a part of the Gaia Focused Product Release to be made public between the Gaia DR3 and DR4 data releases. In order to isolate the DIB signal from the stellar features in each individual spectrum, we identified a set of 160 000 spectra at high Galactic latitudes (|b| ⩾ 65◦ ) covering a range of stellar parameters which we consider to be the DIB-free reference sample. Matching each target spectrum to its closest reference spectra in stellar parameter space allowed us to remove the stellar spectrum empirically, without reference to stellar models, leaving a set of six million ISM spectra. Using the star’s parallax and sky coordinates, we then allocated each ISM spectrum to a voxel (VOlume piXEL) on a contiguous three-dimensional grid with an angular size of 1.8 ◦ (level 5 HEALPix) and 29 unequally sized distance bins. Identifying the two DIBs at 862.1 nm (λ862.1) and 864.8 nm (λ864.8) in the stacked spectra, we modelled their shapes and report the depth, central wavelength, width, and equivalent width (EW) for each, along with confidence bounds on these measurements. We then explored the properties and distributions of these quantities and compared them with similar measurements from other surveys. Our main results are as follows: (1) the strength and spatial distribution of the DIBλ862.1 are very consistent with what was found in Gaia DR3, but for this work we attained a higher signal-to-noise ratio in the stacked spectra to larger distances, which allowed us to trace DIBs in the outer spiral arm and beyond the Scutum–Centaurus spiral arm; (2) we produced an all-sky map below ±65◦ of Galactic latitude to ∼4000 pc of both DIB features and their correlations; (3) we detected the signals of DIBλ862.1 inside the Local Bubble (≲200 pc); and (4) there is a reasonable correlation with the dust reddening found from stellar absorption and EWs of both DIBs with a correlation coefficient of 0.90 for λ862.1 and 0.77 for λ864.8.Instituciones participantes en el Acuerdo Multilateral Gaia6.5 Q1 JCR 20221.896 Q1 SJR 2022No data IDR 202

Gaia Focused Product Release: Asteroid orbital solution

the Spanish Ministry of Economy (MINECO/FEDER, UE), the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MCIN), the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sports, and the Spanish Government through grants BES-2016-078499, BES-2017-083126, BES-C-2017-0085, ESP2016-80079-C2-1-R, FPU16/03827, RTI2018-095076-B-C22, PID2021-122842OB-C22, PDC2021-121059-C22, and TIN2015-65316-P (‘Computatión de Altas Prestaciones VII’), the Juan de la Cierva Incorporatión Programme (FJCI-2015-2671 and IJC2019-04862-I for F. Anders), the Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence Programme (SEV2015-0493) and MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/ EU FEDER and Next Generation EU/PRTR (PRTR-C17.I1); the European Union through European Regional Development Fund ‘A way of making Europe’ through grants PID2021-122842OB-C21, PID2021-125451NA-I00, CNS2022-13523 and RTI2018-095076-B-C21, the Institute of Cosmos Sciences University of Barcelona (ICCUB, Unidad de Excelencia ‘Mar a de Maeztu’) through grant CEX2019-000918-M, the University of Barcelona’s official doctoral programme for the development of an R+D+i project through an Ajuts de Personal Investigador en For-mació (APIF) grant, the Spanish Virtual Observatory project funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/ through grant PID2020-112949GB-I00; the Centro de Investigatión en Tecnologias de la Informatión y las Comunicaciones (CITIC), funded by the Xunta de Galicia through the collaboration agreement to reinforce CIGUS research centers, research consolidation grant ED431B 2021/36 and scholarships from Xunta de Galicia and the EUESF ED481A-2019/155 and ED481A 2021/296; the Red Española de Supercomputación (RES) computer resources at MareNostrum, the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre -Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) through activities AECT-2017-2-0002, AECT-2017-3-0006, AECT-2018-1-0017, AECT-2018-2-0013, AECT-2018-3-0011, AECT-2019-1-0010, AECT-2019-2-0014, AECT-2019-3-0003, AECT-2020-1-0004, and DATA-2020-1-0010, the Departament d’nnovació, Universitats i Empresa de la Generalitat de Catalunya through grant 2014-SGR-1051 for project ‘Models de Programació i Entorns d’Execució Parallels’ (MPEXPAR), and Ramon y Cajal Fellowships RYC2018-025968-I, RYC2021-031683-I and RYC2021-033762-I, funded by MICIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by the European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR and the European Science Foundation (‘Investing in your future’); the Port d’Informació Cientifica (PIC), through a collaboration between the Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas (CIEMAT) and the Institut de F sica d’Altes Energies (IFAE), supported by the call for grants for Scientific and Technical Equipment 2021 of the State Program for Knowledge Generation and Scientific and Technological Strengthening of the R+D+i System, financed by MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033 and the EU NextGeneration/PRTR (Hadoop Cluster for the comprehensive management of massive scientific data, reference EQC2021-007479-P);the Algerian Centre de Recherche en Astronomie, Astro-physique et Géophysique of Bouzareah Observatory; the Austrian Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung (FWF) Hertha Firnberg Programme through grants T359, P20046, and P23737; the BELgian federal Science Policy Office (BEL-SPO) through various PROgramme de Développement d’Expériences scientifiques (PRODEX) grants of the European Space Agency (ESA), the Research Foundation Flanders (Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek) through grant VS.091.16N, the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (FNRS), and the Research Council of Katholieke Univer-siteit (KU) Leuven through grant C16/18/005 (Pushing AsteRoseismology to the next level with TESS, GaiA, and the Sloan Digital Sky SurvEy – PARADISE); the Brazil-France exchange programmes Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) and Coordenação de Aperfeicoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) - Comité Français d’Evaluation de la Coopération Universitaire et Scientifique avec le Brésil (COFECUB); the Chilean Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desar-rollo (ANID) through Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Cientí-fico y Tecnológico (FONDECYT) Regular Project 1210992 (L. Chemin); the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) through grants 11573054, 11703065, and 12173069, the China Scholarship Council through grant 201806040200, and the Natural Science Foundation of Shanghai through grant 21ZR1474100; the Tenure Track Pilot Programme of the Croatian Science Foundation and the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and the project TTP-2018-07-1171 ‘Mining the Variable Sky’, with the funds of the Croatian-Swiss Research Programme; the Czech-Republic Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports through grant LG 15010 and INTER-EXCELLENCE grant LTAUSA18093, and the Czech Space Office through ESA PECS contract 98058; the Danish Ministry of Science; the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research through grant IUT40-1; the European Commission’s Sixth Framework Programme through the European Leadership in Space Astrometry (ELSA) Marie Curie Research Training Network (MRTN-CT-2006-033481), through Marie Curie project PIOF-GA-2009-255267 (Space AsteroSeismology & RR Lyrae stars, SAS-RRL), and through a Marie Curie Transfer-of-Knowledge (ToK) fellowship (MTKD-CT-2004-014188); the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme through grant FP7-606740 (FP7-SPACE-2013-1) for the Gaia European Network for Improved data User Services (GENIUS) and through grant 264895 for the Gaia Research for European Astronomy Training (GREAT-ITN) network; the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) through COST Action CA18104 ‘Revealing the Milky Way with Gaia (MW-Gaia)’; the European Research Council (ERC) through grants 320360, 647208, and 834148 and through the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation and excellent science programmes through Marie Sklodowska-Curie grants 687378 (Small Bodies: Near and Far), 682115 (Using the Magellanic Clouds to Understand the Interaction of Galaxies), 695099 (A sub-percent distance scale from binaries and Cepheids – CepBin), 716155 (Structured ACCREtion Disks – SACCRED), 745617 (Our Galaxy at full HD –Gal-HD), 895174 (The build-up and fate of self-gravitating systems in the Universe), 951549 (Sub-percent calibration of the extragalactic distance scale in the era of big surveys – UniverScale), 101004214 (Innovative Scientific Data Exploration and Exploitation Applications for Space Sciences EXPLORE), 101004719 (OPTICON-RadioNET Pilot), 101055318 (The 3D motion of the Interstellar Medium with ESO and ESA telescopes – ISM-FLOW), and 101063193 (Evolutionary Mechanisms in the Milky waY; the Gaia Data Release 3 revolution – EMMY); the European Science Foundation (ESF), in the framework of the Gaia Research for European Astronomy Training Research Network Programme (GREAT-ESF); the European Space Agency (ESA) in the framework of the Gaia project, through the Plan for European Cooperating States (PECS) programme through contracts C98090 and 4000106398/12/NL/KML for Hungary, through contract 4000115263/15/NL/IB for Germany, through PROgramme de Développement d’Expériences scientifiques (PRODEX) grants 4000132054 for Hungary and through contract 4000132226/20/ES/CM; the Academy of Finland through grants 299543, 307157, 325805, 328654, 336546, and 345115 and the Magnus Ehrn-rooth Foundation; the French Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES), the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) through grant ANR-10-IDEX-0001-02 for the ‘Investissements d’avenir’ programme, through grant ANR-15-CE31-0007 for project ‘Modelling the Milky Way in the Gaia era’ (MOD4Gaia), through grant ANR-14-CE33-0014-01 for project ‘The Milky Way disc formation in the Gaia era’ (ARCHEOGAL), through grant ANR-15-CE31-0012-01 for project ‘Unlocking the potential of Cepheids as primary distance calibrators’ (UnlockCepheids), through grant ANR-19-CE31-0017 for project ‘Secular evolution of galaxies’ (SEGAL), and through grant ANR-18-CE31-0006 for project ‘Galactic Dark Matter’ (GaDaMa), the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and its SNO Gaia of the Institut des Sciences de l’Univers (INSU), its Programmes Nationaux: Cosmologie et Galaxies (PNCG), Gravitation Références Astronomie Métrologie (PNGRAM), Planétolo-gie (PNP), Physique et Chimie du Milieu Interstellaire (PCMI), and Physique Stellaire (PNPS), supported by INSU along with the Institut National de Physique (INP) and the Institut National de Physique nucléaire et de Physique des Particules (IN2P3), and co-funded by CNES; the ‘Action Fédératrice Gaia’ of the Observatoire de Paris, and the Région de Franche-Comté; the German Aerospace Agency (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V., DLR) through grants 50QG0501, 50QG0601, 50QG0602, 50QG0701, 50QG0901, 50QG1001, 50QG1101, 50QG1401, 50QG1402, 50QG1403, 50QG1404, 50QG1904, 50QG2101, 50QG2102, and 50QG2202, and the Centre for Information Services and High Performance Computing (ZIH) at the Technische Universität Dresden for generous allocations of computer time; the Hungarian Academy of Sciences through the János Bolyai Research Scholarship (G. Marton and Z. Nagy), the Lendület Programme grants LP2014-17 and LP2018-7 and the Hungarian National Research, Development, and Innovation Office (NKFIH) through grant KKP-137523 (‘Seis-moLab’); the Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) through a Royal Society - SFI University Research Fellowship (M. Fraser); the Israel Ministry of Science and Technology through grant 3-18143 and the Israel Science Foundation (ISF) through grant 1404/22; the Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI) through contracts I/037/08/0, I/058/10/0, 2014-025-R.0, 2014-025-R.1.2015, and 2018-24-HH.0 and its addendum 2018-24-HH.1-2022 to the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF), contract 2014-049-R.0/1/2, 2022-14-HH.0 to INAF for the Space Science Data Centre (SSDC, formerly known as the ASI Science Data Center, ASDC), contracts I/008/10/0, 2013/030/I.0, 2013-030-I.0.1-2015, and 2016-17-I.0 to the Aerospace Logistics Technology Engineering Company (ALTEC S.p.A.), INAF, and the Italian Ministry of Education, University, and Research (Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca) through the Premiale project ‘MIning The Cosmos Big Data and Innovative Italian Technology for Frontier Astrophysics and Cosmology’ (MITiC); the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) through grant NWO-M-614.061.414, through a VICI grant (A. Helmi), and through a Spinoza prize (A. Helmi), and the Netherlands Research School for Astronomy (NOVA); the Polish National Science Centre through HARMONIA grant 2018/30/M/ST9/00311 and DAINA grant 2017/27/L/ ST9/03221 and the Ministry of Science and Higher Education (MNiSW) through grant DIR/WK/2018/12; the Portuguese Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) through national funds, grants 2022.06962.PTDC and 2022.03993.PTDC, and work contract DL 57/2016/CP1364/ CT0006, grants UIDB/04434/2020 and UIDP/04434/2020 for the Instituto de Astrofisica e Ciências do Espaço (IA), grants UIDB/00408/2020 and UIDP/00408/2020 for LASIGE, and grants UIDB/00099/2020 and UIDP/00099/ 2020 for the Centro de Astrofisica e Gravitação (CENTRA); the Slovenian Research Agency through grant P1-0188; the Spanish Ministry of Economy (MINECO/FEDER, UE), the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MCIN), the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sports, and the Spanish Government through grants BES-2016-078499, BES-2017-083126, BES-C-2017-0085, ESP2016-80079-C2-1-R, FPU16/03827, RTI2018-095076-B-C22, PID2021-122842OB-C22, PDC2021-121059-C22, and TIN2015-65316-P (‘Computatión de Altas Prestaciones VII’), the Juan de la Cierva Incorporatión Programme (FJCI-2015-2671 and IJC2019-04862-I for F. Anders), the Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence Programme (SEV2015-0493) and MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/ EU FEDER and Next Generation EU/PRTR (PRTR-C17.I1); the European Union through European Regional Development Fund ‘A way of making Europe’ through grants PID2021-122842OB-C21, PID2021-125451NA-I00, CNS2022-13523 and RTI2018-095076-B-C21, the Institute of Cosmos Sciences University of Barcelona (ICCUB, Unidad de Excelencia ‘Mar a de Maeztu’) through grant CEX2019-000918-M, the University of Barcelona’s official doctoral programme for the development of an R+D+i project through an Ajuts de Personal Investigador en For-mació (APIF) grant, the Spanish Virtual Observatory project funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/ through grant PID2020-112949GB-I00; the Centro de Investigatión en Tecnologias de la Informatión y las Comunicaciones (CITIC), funded by the Xunta de Galicia through the collaboration agreement to reinforce CIGUS research centers, research consolidation grant ED431B 2021/36 and scholarships from Xunta de Galicia and the EUESF ED481A-2019/155 and ED481A 2021/296; the Red Española de Supercomputación (RES) computer resources at MareNostrum, the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre -Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) through activities AECT-2017-2-0002, AECT-2017-3-0006, AECT-2018-1-0017, AECT-2018-2-0013, AECT-2018-3-0011, AECT-2019-1-0010, AECT-2019-2-0014, AECT-2019-3-0003, AECT-2020-1-0004, and DATA-2020-1-0010, the Departament d’nnovació, Universitats i Empresa de la Generalitat de Catalunya through grant 2014-SGR-1051 for project ‘Models de Programació i Entorns d’Execució Parallels’ (MPEXPAR), and Ramon y Cajal Fellowships RYC2018-025968-I, RYC2021-031683-I and RYC2021-033762-I, funded by MICIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by the European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR and the European Science Foundation (‘Investing in your future’); the Port d’Informació Cientifica (PIC), through a collaboration between the Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas (CIEMAT) and the Institut de F sica d’Altes Energies (IFAE), supported by the call for grants for Scientific and Technical Equipment 2021 of the State Program for Knowledge Generation and Scientific and Technological Strengthening of the R+D+i System, financed by MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033 and the EU NextGeneration/PRTR (Hadoop Cluster for the comprehensive management of massive scientific data, reference EQC2021-007479-P); the Swedish National Space Agency (SNSA/ Rymdstyrelsen); the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research, and Innovation through the Swiss Activités Nationales Complémentaires and the Swiss National Science Foundation through an Eccellenza Professorial Fellowship (award PCEFP2_194638 for R. Anderson); the United Kingdom Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC), the United Kingdom Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), and the United Kingdom Space Agency (UKSA) through the following grants to the University of Bristol, Brunel University London, the Open University, the University of Cambridge, the University of Edinburgh, the University of Leicester, the Mullard Space Sciences Laboratory of University College London, and the United Kingdom Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL):6.51.999 Q1 SJR 2022No data IDR 2022UE

Gaia Focused Product Release: Radial velocity time series of long-period variables

Context. The third Gaia Data Release (DR3) provided photometric time series of more than 2 million long-period variable (LPV) candidates. Anticipating the publication of full radial-velocity data planned with Data Release 4, this Focused Product Release (FPR) provides radial-velocity time series for a selection of LPV candidates with high-quality observations. Aims. We describe the production and content of the Gaia catalog of LPV radial-velocity time series, and the methods used to compute the variability parameters published as part of the Gaia FPR. Methods. Starting from the DR3 catalog of LPV candidates, we applied several filters to construct a sample of sources with high-quality radial-velocity measurements. We modeled their radial-velocity and photometric time series to derive their periods and amplitudes, and further refined the sample by requiring compatibility between the radial-velocity period and at least one of the G, GBP, or GRP photometric periods. Results. The catalog includes radial-velocity time series and variability parameters for 9614 sources in the magnitude range 6 ≲ G/mag ≲ 14, including a flagged top-quality subsample of 6093 stars whose radial-velocity periods are fully compatible with the values derived from the G, GBP, and GRP photometric time series. The radial-velocity time series contain a mean of 24 measurements per source taken unevenly over a duration of about three years. We identify the great majority of the sources (88%) as genuine LPV candidates, with about half of them showing a pulsation period and the other half displaying a long secondary period. The remaining 12% of the catalog consists of candidate ellipsoidal binaries. Quality checks against radial velocities available in the literature show excellent agreement. We provide some illustrative examples and cautionary remarks. Conclusions. The publication of radial-velocity time series for almost ten thousand LPV candidates constitutes, by far, the largest such database available to date in the literature. The availability of simultaneous photometric measurements gives a unique added value to the Gaia catalog.Algerian Centre de Recherche en Astronomie, Astro-physique et Géophysique of Bouzareah ObservatoryAustrian Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung (FWF) Hertha Firnberg Programme through grants T359, P20046, and P23737BELgian federal Science Policy Office (BEL-SPO) through various PROgramme de Développement d’Expériences scientifiques (PRODEX) grants of the European Space Agency (ESA), the Research Foundation Flanders (Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek) through grant VS.091.16N, the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (FNRS), and the Research Council of Katholieke Universiteit (KU) Leuven through grant C16/18/005 (Pushing AsteRoseismology to the next level with TESS, GaiA, and the Sloan DIgital Sky SurvEy – PARADISE)Et al.6.5 Q1 JCR 20221.999 Q1 SJR 2022No data IDR 2022UE