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Pierre Auger Collaboration(Abreu, P. et al), & Pastor, S. (2012). Antennas for the detection of radio emission pulses from cosmic-ray induced air showers at the Pierre Auger Observatory. J. Instrum., 7, P10011–49pp.
Abstract: The Pierre Auger Observatory is exploring the potential of the radio detection technique to study extensive air showers induced by ultra-high energy cosmic rays. The Auger Engineering Radio Array (AERA) addresses both technological and scientific aspects of the radio technique. A first phase of AERA has been operating since September 2010 with detector stations observing radio signals at frequencies between 30 and 80 MHz. In this paper we present comparative studies to identify and optimize the antenna design for the final configuration of AERA consisting of 160 individual radio detector stations. The transient nature of the air shower signal requires a detailed description of the antenna sensor. As the ultra-wideband reception of pulses is not widely discussed in antenna literature, we review the relevant antenna characteristics and enhance theoretical considerations towards the impulse response of antennas including polarization effects and multiple signal reflections. On the basis of the vector effective length we study the transient response characteristics of three candidate antennas in the time domain. Observing the variation of the continuous galactic background intensity we rank the antennas with respect to the noise level added to the galactic signal.
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Pierre Auger Collaboration(Abreu, P. et al), & Pastor, S. (2012). The rapid atmospheric monitoring system of the Pierre Auger Observatory. J. Instrum., 7, P09001–41pp.
Abstract: The Pierre Auger Observatory is a facility built to detect air showers produced by cosmic rays above 10(17) eV. During clear nights with a low illuminated moon fraction, the UV fluorescence light produced by air showers is recorded by optical telescopes at the Observatory. To correct the observations for variations in atmospheric conditions, atmospheric monitoring is performed at regular intervals ranging from several minutes (for cloud identification) to several hours (for aerosol conditions) to several days (for vertical profiles of temperature, pressure, and humidity). In 2009, the monitoring program was upgraded to allow for additional targeted measurements of atmospheric conditions shortly after the detection of air showers of special interest, e. g., showers produced by very high-energy cosmic rays or showers with atypical longitudinal profiles. The former events are of particular importance for the determination of the energy scale of the Observatory, and the latter are characteristic of unusual air shower physics or exotic primary particle types. The purpose of targeted (or “rapid”) monitoring is to improve the resolution of the atmospheric measurements for such events. In this paper, we report on the implementation of the rapid monitoring program and its current status. The rapid monitoring data have been analyzed and applied to the reconstruction of air showers of high interest, and indicate that the air fluorescence measurements affected by clouds and aerosols are effectively corrected using measurements from the regular atmospheric monitoring program. We find that the rapid monitoring program has potential for supporting dedicated physics analyses beyond the standard event reconstruction.
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Pierre Auger Collaboration(Abreu, P. et al), & Pastor, S. (2012). Measurement of the Proton-Air Cross Section at root s=57 TeV with the Pierre Auger Observatory. Phys. Rev. Lett., 109(6), 062002–9pp.
Abstract: We report a measurement of the proton-air cross section for particle production at the center-of-mass energy per nucleon of 57 TeV. This is derived from the distribution of the depths of shower maxima observed with the Pierre Auger Observatory: systematic uncertainties are studied in detail. Analyzing the tail of the distribution of the shower maxima, a proton-air cross section of [505 +/- 22(stat)(-36)(+28)(syst)] mb is found.
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Pierre Auger Collaboration(Abreu, P. et al), & Pastor, S. (2012). Search for signatures of magnetically-induced alignment in the arrival directions measured by the Pierre Auger Observatory. Astropart Phys., 35(6), 354–361.
Abstract: We present the results of an analysis of data recorded at the Pierre Auger Observatory in which we search for groups of directionally-aligned events (or 'multiplets') which exhibit a correlation between arrival direction and the inverse of the energy. These signatures are expected from sets of events coming from the same source after having been deflected by intervening coherent magnetic fields. The observation of several events from the same source would open the possibility to accurately reconstruct the position of the source and also measure the integral of the component of the magnetic field orthogonal to the trajectory of the cosmic rays. We describe the largest multiplets found and compute the probability that they appeared by chance from an isotropic distribution. We find no statistically significant evidence for the presence of multiplets arising from magnetic deflections in the present data.
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Aceti, F., Liang, W. H., Oset, E., Wu, J. J., & Zou, B. S. (2012). Isospin breaking and f(0)(980)-a(0)(980) mixing in the eta(1405) -> pi(0)f(0)(980) reaction. Phys. Rev. D, 86(11), 114007–11pp.
Abstract: We make a theoretical study of the eta(1405) -> pi(0)f(0)(980) and eta(1405) -> pi(0)a(0)(980) reactions with an aim to determine the isospin violation and the mixing of the f(0)(980) and a(0)(980) resonances. We make use of the chiral unitary approach where these two resonances appear as composite states of two mesons, dynamically generated by the meson-meson interaction provided by chiral Lagrangians. We obtain a very narrow shape for the f(0)(980) production in agreement with a BES experiment. As to the amount of isospin violation, or f(0)(980) and a(0)(980) mixing, assuming constant vertices for the primary eta(1405) -> pi K-0 (K) over bar and eta(1405) -> pi(0)pi(0)eta production, we find results which are much smaller than found in the recent experimental BES paper, but consistent with results found in two other related BES experiments. We have tried to understand this anomaly by assuming an I = 1 mixture in the eta(1405) wave function, but this leads to a much bigger width of the f(0)(980) mass distribution than observed experimentally. The problem is solved by using the primary production driven by eta' -> K*(K) over bar followed by K* -> K pi, which induces an extra singularity in the loop functions needed to produce the f(0)(980) and a(0)(980) resonances. Improving upon earlier work along the same lines, and using the chiral unitary approach, we can now predict absolute values for the ratio Gamma(pi(0), pi(+)pi(-))/Gamma(pi(0), pi(0)eta) which are in fair agreement with experiment. We also show that the same results hold if we had the eta(1475) resonance or a mixture of these two states, as seems to be the case in the BES experiment.
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