Using the facilities of the KASCADE Central Detector extensive air showers (EAS) muon arrival time distributions, observed with reference to the arrival time of the first locally registered muon, and ...their correlations with other EAS observables have been experimentally investigated. The variation of adequately defined time parameters with the distance
R
μ from the EAS axis has been measured. The experimental data enable a study of the sensitivity of such local arrival time distributions, which characterise the structure of the shower disc, to the mass composition of cosmic rays in the energy region around the knee. For that purpose, non-parametric multivariate even-by-event analyses have been performed for an estimate of the mass composition specified by three different mass groups, invoking detailed Monte Carlo simulations of the EAS development. It turns out that local muon arrival time distributions, without information on the curvature of the shower disc, display a minor sensitivity to the mass of the EAS inducing particle, at least for distances from the shower axis
R
μ<100 m. The measurements comprise a subset of all EAS events registered by KASCADE due to the observation conditions of the arrival time distributions, with a threshold of the muon energy
E
th=2.4 GeV and a minimum multiplicity
n
th for being accepted in the observed data samples. This subset is sensitive to variations of the integral EAS muon energy spectrum. By studying the event acceptance in the registered samples on basis of Monte Carlo simulations a test of the consistency of the Monte Carlo simulations with the data is enabled, comparing the results inferred from observations at different
R
μ and different
n
th values. Within the present uncertainties the results of such a test show a remarkable agreement of the experimental findings with the Monte Carlo simulations, using the QGSJET model as generator of the high-energy hadronic interactions.
To better understand the radio signal emitted by extensive air-showers and to further develop the radio detection technique of high-energy cosmic rays, the LOPES experiment was reconfigured to ...LOPES-3D. LOPES-3D is able to measure all three vectorial components of the electric field of radio emission from cosmic ray air showers. The additional measurement of the vertical component ought to increase the reconstruction accuracy of primary cosmic ray parameters like direction and energy, provides an improved sensitivity to inclined showers, and will help to validate simulation of the emission mechanisms in the atmosphere. LOPES-3D will evaluate the feasibility of vectorial measurements for large scale applications. In order to measure all three electric field components directly, a tailor-made antenna type (tripoles) was deployed. The change of the antenna type necessitated new pre-amplifiers and an overall recalibration. The reconfiguration and the recalibration procedure are presented and the operationality of LOPES-3D is demonstrated.
KASCADE-Grande was an air-shower experiment aimed to investigate cosmic rays between 1016 and 1018 eV. The instrument was located at the site of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany at an ...altitude of 110 m a.s.l. and covered an area of 0.5 km2. KASCADE-Grande consisted of several detector systems dedicated to measure different components of the cosmic ray induced air showers, e.g. the muon content (Eth > 230 MeV) and the number of charged particles (Eth > 3 MeV) at ground, which are the basis for several energy and composition studies of cosmic rays. In this contribution, using these observables, the KASCADE-Grande data is divided into light and heavy mass groups and their respective muon densities are reconstructed at different zenith angle intervals. The results are compared with the expectations of the post-LHC hadronic-interaction models, EPOS-LHC and QGSJET-II-04, in order to test the validity of the model predictions.
The KASCADE-Grande experiment operated at KIT from January 2004 to November 2012, measuring Extensive Air Showers (EAS) generated by primary cosmic rays in the 1016–1018eV energy range. The ...experiment measured, for each single event, with a high resolution, the total number of charged particles (Nch) and of muons (Nμ).
In this contribution we summarize the results obtained about:
(i) the measurement of the all particle energy spectrum, discussing the influence of the hadronic interaction model used to derive the energy calibration of the experimental data.
(ii) The energy spectra derived separating the events according to the Nμ/Nch ratio. This technique allowed us to unveil a steepening of the spectrum of heavy primaries at E∼1016.92±0.04eV and a hardening of the spectrum of light primaries at E∼1017.08±0.08eV.
(ii) A search for large scale anisotropies.
The LOPES experiment—Recent results, status and perspectives Huege, T.; Apel, W.D.; Arteaga, J.C. ...
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section A, Accelerators, spectrometers, detectors and associated equipment,
01/2012, Letnik:
662
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The LOPES experiment at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology has been taking radio data in the frequency range from 40 to 80
MHz in coincidence with the KASCADE-Grande air shower detector since ...2003. Various experimental configurations have been employed to study aspects such as the energy scaling, geomagnetic dependence, lateral distribution, and polarization of the radio emission from cosmic rays. The high quality per-event air shower information provided by KASCADE-Grande has been the key to many of these studies and has even allowed us to perform detailed per-event comparisons with simulations of the radio emission. In this article, we give an overview of results obtained by LOPES, and present the status and perspectives of the ever-evolving experiment.
The temporal structure of the extensive air shower (EAS) muon component (
E
thres=2.4 GeV) is studied at sea level by measurements of the muon arrival time distributions using the muon detection ...facilities of the KASCADE central detector. Data have been analysed for EAS core distances up to 110 m for primary energies around the knee region. The time structure of the EAS muon component is represented by the distributions of the mean, median, first quartile and the third quartile of the muon arrival time distributions relative to the foremost muon. The EAS time profiles (variation with the distance from the EAS center) are studied along their dependencies on the angle of incidence and the energy-indicative muon number
N
μ
tr. Effects of the fluctuation of the arrival time of the first registered muon are scrutinised and corrected. The experimental results are compared with EAS Monte Carlo (CORSIKA–GEANT) simulations, fully including the detector responses and illustrating the phenomenological features. The comparisons, though generally in fair global agreement, revealed that the simulations underestimate the shower thickness and show nearly no dependence on the mass composition if the time resolution of the apparatus is realistically taken into account.
The KASCADE experiment measures a high number of EAS observables with a large degree of sampling of the electron–photon, muon, and hadron components. It provides accurate data for an event-by-event ...analysis of the primary cosmic ray flux in the energy range around the knee. The possibility of selecting samples of enriched proton and iron induced extensive air showers by applying the statistical techniques of multivariate analyses is scrutinized using detailed Monte Carlo simulations of three different primaries. The purity and efficiency of the proton and iron classification probability is investigated. After obtaining enriched samples from the measured data by application of the procedures the reconstructed number of hadrons, hadronic energy and other parameters are investigated in the primary energy range 10
15–10
16 eV. By comparing these shower parameters for purified proton and iron events, respectively, with simulated distributions an attempt is made to check the validity of strong interaction models at high energies.
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