Study of Highest Energy Cosmic Rays

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Cosmic rays have been observed up to energies in excess of 10^20 eV. It is not at all clear how these particles are accelerated up to such energies, since standard acceleration scenarios have difficulties above 10^15 eV or so. It is clear, though, that the sources of these extremely high energy cosmic rays must be nearby. Otherwise interactions with the microwave background will degrade the particle energies, and thereby prevent them from getting to us from distant sources. The Auger experiment is designed to study these highest energy particles. Auger would be the first air shower array large enough (9000 km^2-sr) to detect a reasonable number of 10^20 eV events, and it should have sufficient angular resolution (1 degree) to trace them back to their sources in the sky. This proposal will aid in the Auger project development through simulation of cosmic ray showers in the detectors.