Operation of the University of Utah Cosmic Ray Group (Including the High Resolution Fly's Eye Experiment and the Telescope Array Project)

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This proposal requests funding of operations for the High Resolution Fly's Eye and the Telescope Array experiments. The aim of both HiRes and TA is to find the origins of cosmic rays, and to study their composition and their interactions with the interstellar medium. The HiRes project at Dugway Proving Grounds has completed data taking and support is requested for the final analysis phase of the experiment. Completion of the HiRes analysis will be the focus of much of the work in the first year of this proposal. TA is an experiment being mounted by groups from Japan, the United States, Taiwan, China and South Korea to study ultrahigh energy cosmic rays. It is composed of an unprecedented suite of detectors which will give seamless coverage of the comic ray spectrum from above the "knee" to beyond the GZK cutoff. TA will have unique capabilities for the search for anisotropy and additional high precision studies of the spectral features. It can tell us about the endpoint energies of galactic sources, and for extragalactic sources it can determine their power laws, endpoint energies, and evolution. In the first phase of this project, the Utah group will be constructing the third fluorescence site, using reconditioned HiRes equipment moved from Dugway Proving Grounds and providing support and integration for the other two Japanese funded fluorescence sites as well as the large ground array of plastic scintillation counters. This part of the project will be complete in summer of 2007 and limited data acquisition is expected to begin at this time. The authors of this proposal have a well-established record of outreach into the local and national communities, through the ASPIRE on-line science lessons, through involvement of high school teachers and students in research projects, and through a regular series of presentations and workshops delivered to audiences at all levels. The ASPIRE project will continue as part of the final phase of HiRes and will then morph into the outreach arm of the TA experiment.