SciPost Submission Page
Probing Astroparticle and Particle Physics at the Pierre Auger Observatory: highlights and perspectives
by Antonella Castellina for the Pierre Auger Collaboration
Submission summary
| Authors (as registered SciPost users): | Antonella Castellina |
| Submission information | |
|---|---|
| Preprint Link: | scipost_202410_00067v2 (pdf) |
| Date submitted: | 2024-12-18 17:00 |
| Submitted by: | Castellina, Antonella |
| Submitted to: | SciPost Physics Proceedings |
| Proceedings issue: | 22nd International Symposium on Very High Energy Cosmic Ray Interactions (ISVHECRI 2024) |
| Ontological classification | |
|---|---|
| Academic field: | Physics |
| Specialties: |
|
| Approach: | Experimental |
Abstract
With more than 15 years of data acquisition, the results from the Pierre Auger Obser- vatory provide the most precise data on ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) in the world. It is now beyond doubt that the UHECR composition becomes lighter for energies increasing up to ∼ 2 EeV, and it starts getting heavier above this energy when approach- ing ultra-high energies. A predominantly extragalactic origin of UHECRs beyond the ankle is proven with high significance, while at higher energies there are indications of correlation with nearby sources. The collected data allow us to study the properties of hadronic interactions at ultra-high energies and test the existence of possible effects beyond the Standard Model of particles. The future prospects opening up with the Auger- Prime upgrade are described.
Author comments upon resubmission
We have implemented basically all the suggestions for improvement of the manuscript .
We list below the answer to the 3 points where we took a different action.
List of changes
Introduction:
(5) Please include references to and a brief discussion of AGASA, Fly’s Eye and HiRes, the experiments on which the PAO is largely based.
Answer: We cannot include a brief discussion about old experiments, the main reason being the allowed number of pages for these proceedings ( we already used more than required, and we thank the editors for this).
Therefore, we think that a description of old experiments, however brief, is not needed, having been given so many times in the literature and in journal publications. We chose to give room to the results of Auger that have been presented at the conference. However, we agree that a reference is needed, and we chose the review of Nagano and Watson, that very well describes the development of the field and the “ancestors” of Auger.
(7) Modify "Two infilled areas have been instrumented with” to "Two inner areas of the array have been instrumented with” and also provide reference to this work.
Answer: Reference 2 already includes the description of the SD-750; we included a reference for SD-433 in the Energy spectrum discussion where this array has been used to derive the spectrum down to the second knee.
In the conclusion, we agree to your point
(19) Modify "hints of correlation have been found with the direction of starburst galaxies and active galactic nuclei, although not yet at the observation level.” to "hints of correlation have been found with the direction of starburst galaxies and active galactic nuclei, although not yet at the level of identifying individual sources.”
but we would like to point out that we are not looking for small scale anisotropies, rather to intermediate scale, due to the quite large angular spread of heavier nuclei at the UHE.