This paper gives a description of a new on-line database http://lpsc.in2p3.fr/crdb and associated on-line tools (data selection, data export, plots, etc.) for charged cosmic-ray measurements. The experimental setups (type, flight dates, techniques) from which the data originate are included in the database, along with the references to all relevant publications. The database relies on the MySQL5 engine. The web pages and queries are based on PHP, AJAX and the jquery, jquery.cluetip, jquery-ui, and table-sorter third-party libraries. In this first release, we restrict ourselves to Galactic cosmic rays with Z<=30 and a kinetic energy per nucleon up to a few tens of TeV/n. This corresponds to more than 200 different sub-experiments (i.e., different experiments, or data from the same experiment flying at different times) in as many publications. We set up a cosmic-ray database and provide tools to sort and visualise the data. New data can be submitted, providing the community with a collaborative tool to archive past and future cosmic-ray measurements. Any help/ideas to further expand and/or complement the database is welcome (please contact [email protected]).
We present an update on CRDB (https://lpsc.in2p3.fr/crdb), the cosmic-ray database for charged species. CRDB is based on MySQL, queried and sorted by jquery and table-sorter libraries, and displayed via PHP web pages through the AJAX protocol. We rev
iew the modifications made on the structure and outputs of the database since the first release (Maurin et al., 2014). For this update, the most important feature is the inclusion of ultra-heavy nuclei ($Z>30$), ultra-high energy nuclei (from $10^{15}$ to $10^{20}$ eV), and limits on antinuclei fluxes ($Zleq -1$ for $A>1$); more than 100 experiments, 350 publications, and 40000 data points are now available in CRDB. We also revisited and simplified how users can retrieve data and submit new ones. For questions and requests, please contact [email protected].
LOFAR (the Low Frequency Array), a distributed digital radio telescope with stations in the Netherlands, Germany, France, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, is designed to enable full-sky monitoring of transient radio sources. These capabilities are ide
al for the detection of broadband radio pulses generated in cosmic ray air showers. The core of LOFAR consists of 24 stations within 4 square kilometers, and each station contains 96 low-band antennas and 48 high-band antennas. This dense instrumentation will allow detailed studies of the lateral distribution of the radio signal in a frequency range of 10-250 MHz. Such studies are key to understanding the various radio emission mechanisms within the air shower, as well as for determining the potential of the radio technique for primary particle identification. We present the status of the LOFAR cosmic ray program, including the station design and hardware, the triggering and filtering schemes, and our initial observations of cosmic-ray-induced radio pulses.
ALICE, a general purpose experiment designed to investigate nucleus-nucleus collisions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC), has also been used to detect atmospheric muons produced by cosmic-ray interactions in the atmosphere. In this contributi
on the analysis of the multiplicity distribution of the atmospheric muons detected by ALICE between 2010 and 2013 is presented, along with a comparison with Monte Carlo simulations. Special emphasis is given to the study of high-multiplicity events, i.e. those containing more than 100 reconstructed muons. Such high-multiplicity events demand primary cosmic rays with energy above $10^{16}$ eV. The frequency of these events can be successfully described by assuming a heavy mass composition of primary cosmic rays in this energy range, using the most recent interaction models to describe the development of the air shower resulting from the primary interaction.
A new family of parameters intended for composition studies in cosmic ray surface array detectors is proposed. The application of this technique to different array layout designs has been analyzed. The parameters make exclusive use of surface data co
mbining the information from the total signal at each triggered detector and the array geometry. They are sensitive to the combined effects of the different muon and electromagnetic components on the lateral distribution function of proton and iron initiated showers at any given primary energy. Analytical and numerical studies have been performed in order to assess the reliability, stability and optimization of these parameters. Experimental uncertainties, the underestimation of the muon component in the shower simulation codes, intrinsic fluctuations and reconstruction errors are considered and discussed in a quantitative way. The potential discrimination power of these parameters, under realistic experimental conditions, is compared on a simplified, albeit quantitative way, with that expected from other surface and fluorescence estimators.
Cosmic ray data collected by the KASCADE air shower experiment are competitive in terms of quality and statistics with those of modern observatories. We present a novel mass composition analysis based on archival data acquired from 1998 to 2013 provi
ded by the KASCADE Cosmic ray Data Center (KCDC). The analysis is based on modern machine learning techniques trained on simulation data provided by KCDC. We present spectra for individual groups of primary nuclei, the results of a search for anisotropies in the event arrival directions taking mass composition into account, and search for gamma-ray candidates in the PeV energy domain.