An antenna array devoted to the autonomous radio-detection of high energy cosmic rays is being deployed on the site of the 21
cm array radio telescope in XinJiang, China. Thanks in particular to the ...very good electromagnetic environment of this remote experimental site, self-triggering on extensive air showers induced by cosmic rays has been achieved with a small scale prototype of the foreseen antenna array. We give here a detailed description of the detector and present the first detection of extensive air showers with this prototype.
Neutrinos of astrophysical origin could be detected through the electromagnetic radiation of the particle showers induced in the atmosphere by their interaction in the Earth. This applies in ...particular for tau neutrinos of energies E>1016eV following Earth-skimming trajectories. The ∼1° beaming of the radio emission in the forward direction however implies that the radio signal will likely fly above a detector deployed over a flat site and would therefore not be detected.
We study here how a non-flat detector topography can improve the detection probability of these neutrino-induced air showers. We do this by computing with three distinct tools the neutrino detection efficiency for a radio array deployed over a toy-model mountainous terrain, also taking into account experimental and topographic constraints. We show in particular that ground topographies inclined by few degrees only induce detection efficiencies typically three times larger than those obtained for flat areas for favorable trajectories. We conclude that the topography of the area where the detector is deployed will be a key factor for an experiment like GRAND.
Abstract
GRANDProto35 is the first stage of the GRAND project. It will be composed of an array of 35 radio antennas and 24 scintillation detectors in which the radio and scintillating subarrays will ...be triggered independently. The scintillation detector array allows to cross-check the radio array, thus quantitatively determine its detection efficiency. The photomultiplier of Hamamatsu R7725 is a candidate for the scintillation detector. The characteristics of the PMT will directly affect the resolution of the time and energy measurements and the dynamic detection range of a scintillation detector. A voltage divider circuit featured with dual-readout was designed for the PMT to cover a larger linear dynamic range (LDR). Some characteristics of the PMT were calibrated and investigated: the absolute gain, single photoelectron (SPE) energy resolution, transit time spread (TTS), linear dynamic range, and temperature dependence of the PMT gain. In this paper, details about the system setup, measurement methods, and results will be described.
In July 2012, as the four ground-based gamma-ray telescopes of the H.E.S.S. (High Energy Stereoscopic System) array reached their tenth year of operation in Khomas Highlands, Namibia, a fifth ...telescope took its first data as part of the system. This new Cherenkov detector, comprising a 614.5m2 reflector with a highly pixelized camera in its focal plane, improves the sensitivity of the current array by a factor two and extends its energy domain down to a few tens of GeV.
The present part I of the paper gives a detailed description of the fifth H.E.S.S. telescope׳s camera, presenting the details of both the hardware and the software, emphasizing the main improvements as compared to previous H.E.S.S. camera technology.
TREND50 is a radio detection setup of 50 self-triggered antennas working in the 50–100 MHz frequency range and deployed in a radio-quiet valley of the Tianshan mountains (China). TREND50 achieved its ...goal: the autonomous radiodetection and identification of air showers. Thanks to a dedicated offline selection algorithm, 564 air shower candidates were indeed selected out of 7 · 108 transient radio signals recorded during the 314 live days of data taken during the first two years of operation of this setup (2011 and 2012). This event rate, as well as the distribution of the candidate directions of arrival, is consistent with what is expected from cosmic-ray-induced air showers according to simulations, assuming an additional ∼ 20% contamination of the final sample by background events. This result is obtained at the cost of a reduced air shower detection efficiency, estimated to be ∼ 3%. This low efficiency is mostly due to the large amount of dead time of the setup. This result paves the way for the GRANDProto35 experiment, the first stage of the GRAND project.
The present white paper is submitted as part of the "Snowmass" process to help inform the long-term plans of the United States Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation for high-energy ...physics. Further, it summarizes the science questions driving the Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic-Ray (UHECR) community and provides recommendations on the strategy to answer them in the next two decades.
Aims.We study the efficiency and reliability of cluster mass estimators that are based on the projected phase-space distribution of galaxies in a cluster region. Methods.We analyse a data-set of 62 ...clusters extracted from a concordance ΛCDM cosmological hydrodynamical simulation. We consider both dark matter (DM) particles and simulated galaxies as tracers of the clusters gravitational potential. Two cluster mass estimators are considered: the virial mass estimator, corrected for the surface-pressure term, and a mass estimator (that we call $M_{\sigma}$) based entirely on the velocity dispersion estimate of the cluster. In order to simulate observations, galaxies (or DM particles) are first selected in cylinders of given radius (from 0.5 to 1.5h-1 Mpc) and $\simeq$$200h^{-1}$ Mpc length. Cluster members are then identified by applying a suitable interloper removal algorithm. Results.The virial mass estimator overestimates the true mass by $\simeq$10% on average, for sample sizes of $\ga$60 cluster members. For similar sample sizes, $M_{\sigma}$ underestimates the true mass by $\simeq$15%, on average. For smaller sample sizes, the bias of the virial mass estimator substantially increases, while the $M_{\sigma}$ estimator becomes essentially unbiased. The dispersion of both mass estimates increases by a factor ~2 as the number of cluster members decreases from ~400 to ~20. It is possible to reduce the bias in the virial mass estimates either by removing clusters with significant evidence for subclustering or by selecting early-type galaxies, which substantially reduces the interloper contamination. Early-type galaxies cannot however be used to improve the $M_{\sigma}$ estimates since their intrinsic velocity distribution is slightly biased relative to that of the DM particles. Radially-dependent incompleteness can drastically affect the virial mass estimates, but leaves the $M_{\sigma}$ estimates almost unaffected. Other observational effects, like centering and velocity errors and different observational apertures, have little effect on the mass estimates.
The very large collection area of ground-based gamma-ray telescopes gives them a substantial advantage over balloon or satellite based instruments in the detection of very-high-energy (>600 GeV) ...cosmic-ray electrons. Here we present the electron spectrum derived from data taken with the High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) of imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes. In this measurement, the first of this type, we are able to extend the measurement of the electron spectrum beyond the range accessible to direct measurements. We find evidence for a substantial steepening in the energy spectrum above 600 GeV compared to lower energies.
The high-frequency peaked BL Lac PKS 2155-304 at redshift z = 0.116 is a well-known VHE (>100 GeV) gamma -ray emitter. Since 2002 its VHE flux has been monitored using the H.E.S.S. stereoscopic array ...of imaging atmospheric Cerenkov telescopes in Namibia. During the 2006 July dark period, the average VHE flux was measured to be more than 10 times typical values observed from the object. This article focuses solely on an extreme gamma -ray outburst detected in the early hours of 2006 July 28 (MJD 53,944). The average flux observed during this outburst is I(>200 GeV) = (1.72 plus or minus 0.05 unk plus or minus 0.34 unk) x 10 super(-9) cm-z s-i, corresponding to similar to 7 times the flux, I(>200 GeV), observed from the Crab Nebula. Peak fluxes are measured with 1 minute timescale resolution at more than twice this average value. Variability is seen up to similar to 600 s in the Fourier power spectrum, and well-resolved bursts varying on timescales of similar to 200 s are observed. There are no strong indications for spectral variability within the data. Assuming the emission region has a size comparable to the Schwarzschild radius of a similar to 10 super(9) M unk black hole, Doppler factors greater than 100 are required to accommodate the observed variability timescales.
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