The surface detector system of the Pierre Auger Observatory

Performance of the Pierre Auger Observatory Surface Detector

The Surface Detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory will consist of 1600 water Cherenkov tanks sampling ground particles of air showers produced by energetic cosmic rays. The arrival times are obtained from GPS and power is provided by solar panels. The construction of the array is nearly completed and a large number of detectors has been operational for more than three years. In this paper th...

Testing the surface detector simulation for the Pierre Auger Observatory

The building block of the surface detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory is a water Cherenkov tank. The response to shower particles is simulated using a dedicated program based on GEANT4. To check the simulation chain, we compare the simulated signals produced by cosmic muons at various zenith angles with experimental data from a special Cherenkov detector equipped with a muon hodoscope. The...

Azimuthal asymmetry in the risetime of the surface detector signals of the Pierre Auger Observatory

Performance of the Pierre Auger Observatory Surface Array

The surface detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory is a 1600 water Cherenkov tank array on a triangular 1.5 km grid. The signals from each tank are read out using three 9” photomultipliers and processed at a sampling frequency of 40 MHz, from which a local digital trigger efficiently selects shower candidates. GPS signals are used for time synchronization and a wireless communication system c...

The Lidar System of the Pierre Auger Observatory

The Pierre Auger Observatory in Malargüe, Argentina, is designed to study the origin of ultrahigh energy cosmic rays with energies above 1018 eV. The energy calibration of the detector is based on a system of four air fluorescence detectors. To obtain reliable calorimetric information from the fluorescence stations, the atmospheric conditions at the experiment’s site need to be monitored contin...