Miguel Mostafá at the University of Utah
the Pierre Auger Observatory
Auger Collaboration - Sep '96 in San Rafael, Argentina
In 10 years the Southern Observatory became a reality!
We deployed over 1000 surface detectors, built 4 fluorescence detectors, the Collaboration grew larger, and my hair longer.
(For some strange reason the opposite effect occured to some of my collaborators' hair... go figure)
Auger Collaboration - Mar '06 in Malargüe, Argentina
My contribution
I'm at the University of Utah since January, 2006. My two cents on Auger these days are on two subjects: atmospheric monitoring mainly with the Central Laser Facility (CLF), and on the reconstruction of hybrid events: ultra-high energy comic ray showers seen by both the surface array and the fluorescence detectors.
Atmospheric monitoring is critical for the correct analysis of the fluorescence data and therefore is central to the issue of the GZK cutoff. While the analysis of the Auger hybrid data extends the lower energy range of Auger (to approx. 1017 eV) and results in events with superior directional, shower energy, and compositional information. As the flux of cosmic rays rises dramatically with decreasing energy, this analysis results in a large sample of events for physics.
Results of the hybrid reconstruction are used for anisotropy studies (point sources searches from the Galactic Center, for example), composition measurements (setting limits to photon primaries), and for the determination of the primary spectrum (extended to lower energies).
|
|||||||||
Acknowledgments
My research is supported by the National Science Foundation.
