Bonn 2020 – scientific programme

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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik

T 102: Cosmic rays V

T 102.4: Talk

Friday, April 3, 2020, 11:45–12:00, L-3.001

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, and Tobias Pan for the Pierre Auger collaboration — III. Physikalisches Institut A, RWTH Aachen University

The Pierre Auger Observatory is the world’s largest experiment for the detection of ultra-high energy extensive air showers. It consists of a surface array of 1660 water Cherenkov detectors and 27 fluorescence telescopes, which allows for a hybrid reconstruction of air showers.
An air shower detected by the observatory can have its origin in nuclei, but also in very energetic photons. Analysing the photon flux is crucial to understand the flux suppression of cosmic rays above 50 EeV.
Until now, no photon-induced air shower has been detected by the Pierre Auger Collaboration. Recent studies allowed for better upper limits for the photon flux at the ultra-high energy, but they are constrained by the current discrimination power between different types of primary particles. AugerPrime, an on-going upgrade of the Pierre Auger Observatory, brings, among other improvements, an additional scintillator detector to be installed on top of each water Cherenkov detector station. Thereby, a more precise measurement of the number of muons is aimed at, which will increase the sensitivity to primary photons significantly. As such, new analysis frameworks exploiting the additional information obtained using AugerPrime are being developed. First studies of the performance to be expected will be presented.