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

这项提案要求拨款支持犹他州的物理学家在南皮埃尔·奥格宇宙射线天文台工作，该天文台目前已全面投入生产，将于2006年完工。大约10%的俄歇数据集将是“混合”事件，由表面探测器（SD）和大气荧光探测器（FD）测量。风淋室能量的FD测量关键依赖于精确的大气监测。该提案描述了犹他州物理学家开发的几种基于激光的大气监测系统，这些系统目前正在阿根廷部署。资金将使团队能够完成硬件部署，实施软件，以便在FD获取数据时自主操作系统，开发自动程序以减少来自这些系统的数据，生成和维护所需的大气数据库，并改进利用大气建模的纵向剖面重建算法。犹他州的研究小组将积极参与俄歇数据的物理分析，这些数据为南部天空提供了前所未有的研究。在混合模式下测量的事件对成分分析具有特殊的价值。蒙特卡罗研究这两个重要的物理课题将是犹他俄采小组对该项目贡献的另一个方面。犹他小组已经参与了现有的南方天文台的外展工作。这种拓展的另一个组成部分是让高中生和大学本科生参与该小组开展的实际研究工作。

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.