Aachen 2019 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik

T 61: Kosmische Strahlung III

T 61.4: Vortrag

Mittwoch, 27. März 2019, 16:55–17:10, S13

Search for ultra-high energy photons with the AugerPrime upgrade of the Pierre Auger Observatory — •Paulo Ferreira, Thomas Bretz, Adrianna García, Thomas Hebbeker, Julian Kemp, Tobias Pan, and Christine Peters — III. Physikalisches Institut A, RWTH Aachen University

The Pierre Auger Observatory, located in the Argentinian Pampa, is the world’s largest experiment for the detection of ultra-high energy extensive air showers. For such, it uses a surface array of 1660 water Cherenkov detectors and 27 fluorescence telescopes. Among other studies, it has been used to search for photon-induced showers at energies above 1 EeV. Analyzing the photon flux is crucial to understand the flux suppression of cosmic rays above 50 EeV. Until now, no photon-induced shower has been confirmed by the Pierre Auger Collaboration. Even if these studies allow for the best upper limits for the photon flux at the ultra-high energy, they are limited by the current discrimination power between photon and hadron induced showers. As part of the recent upgrade of the Pierre Auger Observatory, called AugerPrime, an additional scintillator detector will be installed on top of each water Cherenkov station. Thereby, a more precise measurement of the number of muons is aimed at, which will increase the sensitivity to photons significantly. As such, this analysis focus on studying the increase in discrimination power that will be reached with AugerPrime.