1. Measurement of the cosmic ray composition at the knee with the SPASE-2/AMANDA-B10 detectors
- Author
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T. Messarius, M. Solarz, A. Silvestri, Freddy Binon, T. Burgess, S. Böser, J. P Dewulf, P. B. Price, A. C. Pohl, Y. Minaeva, R. Schwarz, Hakki Ögelman, J. Rodríguez Martino, Kyle T. Mandli, I. Taboada, D. Bertrand, T. O. B. Schmidt, J. Ahrens, K. Rawlins, D. J. Boersma, A. Biron, Kurt Woschnagg, P. Ekström, R. Nahnhauer, M. Hellwig, Matthias Leuthold, Paul Evenson, D. R. Nygren, E. Andres, H. G. Sander, P. Steffen, C. P. McParland, Dmitry Chirkin, Michael Stamatikos, James Madsen, Jan Conrad, T. Feser, R. Porrata, T. DeYoung, Staffan Carius, I. Liubarsky, M. Ribordy, Xinhua Bai, L. Gerhardt, A. Goldschmidt, Gerald Przybylski, Glenn Spiczak, D. Ross, R. Engel, K.-H. Becker, K. H. Sulanke, B. Hughey, T. Neunhöffer, R. Hardtke, T. Becka, M. Gaug, James Kim, Albrecht Karle, R. Morse, R. C. Bay, P. Niessen, Todor Stanev, Yajun Wang, S. Schlenstedt, R. Ganugapati, D. Hubert, C. Wiedemann, Olga Botner, D. Steele, C. Walck, Ph. Herquet, S. Tilav, P. C. Mock, D. F. Cowen, Marek Kowalski, P. Miocinovic, Kael Hanson, Thomas K. Gaisser, G. B. Yodh, L. Köpke, Paolo Desiati, Ph. Olbrechts, H. Leich, C. Pérez de los Heros, T. Castermans, Wolfgang Rhode, C. De Clercq, Christopher Wiebusch, Markus Ackermann, S. W. Barwick, Othmane Bouhali, W. Wu, David A. Schneider, G. C. Hill, Heiko Geenen, Pawel Marciniewski, Anna Davour, Janet Jacobsen, Wolfgang Wagner, P. O. Hulth, H. Wissing, Elisa Bernardini, Jim Hinton, R. G. Stokstad, R. Wischnewski, P. Lindahl, Christian Spiering, S. Hundertmark, K. Rochester, K. Kuehn, Alan Watson, J. I. Lamoureux, K. Schinarakis, Jodi Cooley, T. Hauschildt, K. Hultqvist, S. Young, T. Miller, J. Lloyd-Evans, Adam Bouchta, S. Richter, H. S. Matis, Allan Hallgren, Francis Halzen, E. Dickinson, and Elisa Resconi
- Subjects
Astroparticle physics ,Physics ,Astrophysics::High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena ,Astrophysics::Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics ,Astronomy and Astrophysics ,Cosmic ray ,Astrophysics ,Cosmic Rays ,Mass composition ,Neutrino astronomy ,Atomic mass ,Air shower ,Ultra-high-energy cosmic ray ,Neutrino ,Cherenkov radiation - Abstract
The mass composition of high-energy cosmic rays at energies above 1015 eV can provide crucial information for the understanding of their origin. Air showers were measured simultaneously with the SPASE-2 air shower array and the AMANDA-B10 Cherenkov telescope at the South Pole. This combination has the advantage to sample almost all high-energy shower muons and is thus a new approach to the determination of the cosmic ray composition. The change in the cosmic ray mass composition was measured versus existing data from direct measurements at low energies. Our data show an increase of the mean log atomic mass 〈lnA〉 by about 0.8 between 500 TeV and 5 PeV. This trend of an increasing mass through the "knee" region is robust against a variety of systematic effects. © 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
- Published
- 2004
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