Speaker
Dr
Darko Veberic
(Karlsruhe Institute of Technology)
Description
The Pierre Auger Observatory, located on a vast, high plain in western Argentina, is the world's largest cosmic ray observatory. The objectives of the Observatory are to probe the origin and characteristics of cosmic rays with energies above $10^{17}$ eV and to study the interactions of these most energetic particles observed in nature. The Observatory design features an array of 1660 water-Cherenkov particle-detector stations spread over 3000 km$^2$, overlooked by 27 air-fluorescence telescopes. The Observatory has been in successful operation since its completion in 2008 and has recorded data from an exposure exceeding 80,000 km$^2$ sr yr. We will give a short historical overview of efforts in this field of research, discuss the measurement of the energy spectrum of cosmic rays, studies of the cosmic-ray mass composition, the discovery of a large-scale anisotropy in the arrival direction of cosmic rays, report on tests of hadronic interactions beyond LHC energies, multi-messenger analyses with neutral primaries and the progress and performance of the upgrade of the Observatory aimed to clarify the origin of the observed flux suppression at the ultrahigh energies.
Primary author
Dr
Darko Veberic
(Karlsruhe Institute of Technology)
Co-author
Pierre Auger Collaboration
(Pierre Auger Observatory)
