Study of the highest energy cosmic rays with air fluorescence technique

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The Air Fluorescence technique is an excellent method to study the highest energy cosmic rays. In this research, we try to clarify the technical problem in air fluorescence technique and made it more reliable. The most important problem is the estimation of the light extinction in the atmosphere. There are extinction processes, Rayleigh Scattering and Mie Scattering. Rayleigh Scattering is due to the molecule in the atmosphere, Mie Scattering is due to the dust particles in the atmosphere. Therefore, the scattering coefficient and angular distribution in Mie Scattering variate in time to time.We summarize this research out as follows.(1) We have studied the UV light extinction in the atmosphere at Akeno observatory using Lidar system.(2) We discovered 10 events which exceed the theoretical cutoff energy(l020eV) by AGASA detector in Akeno observatory.(3) We discovered the existence of the clusters in the arrival direction of the highest energy cosmic rays. This result suggests the existence of point sources of the highest energy cosmic rays.