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Register a new user(In)Feasability of Studying Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays with Smartphones
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We estimate the effective area available for cosmic-ray detection with a network of smartphones under optimistic conditions. To measure cosmic-ray air showers with a minimally-adequate precision and a detection area similar to existing ground-based detectors, the fraction of participating users needs to unrealistically large. We conclude that the prospects of cosmic-ray research using smartphones are very limited.
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We propose a novel approach for observing cosmic rays at ultra-high energy ($>10^{18}$~eV) by repurposing the existing network of smartphones as a ground detector array. Extensive air showers generated by cosmic rays produce muons and high-energy photons, which can be detected by the CMOS sensors of smartphone cameras. The small size and low efficiency of each sensor is compensated by the large number of active phones. We show that if user adoption targets are met, such a network will have significant observing power at the highest energies.
The origin of the ultra high energy cosmic rays (UHECR) with energies above E > 1017eV, is still unknown. The discovery of their sources will reveal the engines of the most energetic astrophysical accelerators in the universe. This is a written version of a series of lectures devoted to UHECR at the 2013 CERN-Latin-American School of High-Energy Physics. We present an introduction to acceleration mechanisms of charged particles to the highest energies in astrophysical objects, their propagation from the sources to Earth, and the experimental techniques for their detection. We also discuss some of the relevant observational results from Telescope Array and Pierre Auger Observatory. These experiments deal with particle interactions at energies orders of magnitude higher than achieved in terrestrial accelerators.
The Galactic magnetic field, locally observed to be on the order of a few $mu$G, is sufficiently strong to induce deflections in the arrival directions of ultra-high energy cosmic rays. We present a method that establishes measures of self-consistency for hypothesis sets comprised of cosmic magnetic field models and ultra-high energy cosmic ray composition and source distributions. The method uses two independent procedures to compare the backtracked velocity vectors outside the magnetic field model to the distribution of backtracked velocity directions of many isotropic observations with the same primary energies. This allows for an estimate of the statistical consistency between the observed data and simulated isotropic observations. Inconsistency with the isotropic expectation of source correlation in both procedures is interpreted as the hypothesis set providing a self-consistent description of GMF and UHECR properties for the cosmic ray observations.
Radio waves, perhaps because they are uniquely transparent in our terrestrial atmosphere, as well as the cosmos beyond, or perhaps because they are macroscopic, so the basic instruments of detection (antennas) are easily constructable, arguably occupy a privileged position within the electromagnetic spectrum, and, correspondingly, receive disproportionate attention experimentally. Detection of radio-frequency radiation, at macroscopic wavelengths, has blossomed within the last decade as a competitive method for measurement of cosmic particles, particularly charged cosmic rays and neutrinos. Cosmic-ray detection via radio emission from extensive air showers has been demonstrated to be a reliable technique that has reached a reconstruction quality of the cosmic-ray parameters competitive with more traditional approaches. Radio detection of neutrinos in dense media seems to be the most promising technique to achieve the gigantic detection volumes required to measure neutrinos at energies beyond the PeV-scale flux established by IceCube. In this article, we review radio detection both of cosmic rays in the atmosphere, as well as neutrinos in dense media.
An accurate knowledge of the fluorescence yield and its dependence on atmospheric properties such as pressure, temperature or humidity is essential to obtain a reliable measurement of the primary energy of cosmic rays in experiments using the fluorescence technique. In this work, several sets of fluorescence yield data (i.e. absolute value and quenching parameters) are described and compared. A simple procedure to study the effect of the assumed fluorescence yield on the reconstructed shower parameters (energy and shower maximum depth) as a function of the primary features has been developed. As an application, the effect of water vapor and temperature dependence of the collisional cross section on the fluorescence yield and its impact on the reconstruction of primary energy and shower maximum depth has been studied.
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