Study of the Highest Energy Cosmic Rays with the Pierre Auger Observatory

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This proposal requests funds to support physicists in Utah to work on the southern Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory, which is now in full production and will be completed in 2006. Approximately 10% of the Auger data set will be "hybrid" events that are measured by both surface detectors (SD) and atmospheric fluorescence detectors (FD). The FD measurement of an air shower's energy relies critically on accurate atmospheric monitoring. This proposal describes several laser-based atmospheric monitoring systems developed by the Utah physicists who are presently deploying them in Argentina. Funding will enable the group to complete the hardware deployment, to implement software that will operate the systems autonomously whenever the FD is taking data, to develop automatic procedures for reducing the data from those systems, to produce and maintain the required atmospheric database, and to refine the longitudinal profile reconstruction algorithms that utilize atmospheric modeling. The Utah group will be actively engaged in physics analysis with the Auger data that offer an unprecedented study of the southern sky. The events measured in hybrid mode will be of special value to composition analysis. Monte Carlo studies of both of these important physics topics will be another aspect of the Utah Auger group's contribution to the project.The Utah group has been involved with outreach efforts at the existing southern observatory. Another component of this outreach has been to involve high school and undergraduate university students in actual research efforts undertaken by the group.