Properties and performance of the prototype instrument for the Pierre Auger Observatory

Date

2004-05-01

Department

Program

Citation of Original Publication

Abraham, J., M. Aglietta, I. C. Aguirre, M. Albrow, D. Allard, I. Allekotte, P. Allison, et al. “Properties and Performance of the Prototype Instrument for the Pierre Auger Observatory.” Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment 523, no. 1 (May 1, 2004): 50–95. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nima.2003.12.012.

Rights

This work was written as part of one of the author's official duties as an Employee of the United States Government and is therefore a work of the United States Government. In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 105, no copyright protection is available for such works under U.S. Law.
Public Domain

Abstract

Construction of the first stage of the Pierre Auger Observatory has begun. The aim of the Observatory is to collect unprecedented information about cosmic rays above 10¹⁸eV. The first phase of the project, the construction and operation of a prototype system, known as the engineering array, has now been completed. It has allowed all of the sub-systems that will be used in the full instrument to be tested under field conditions. In this paper, the properties and performance of these sub-systems are described and their success illustrated with descriptions of some of the events recorded thus far.