The upgraded electronics of the Pierre Auger surface detector

Testing the surface detector simulation for the Pierre Auger Observatory

The building block of the surface detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory is a water Cherenkov tank. The response to shower particles is simulated using a dedicated program based on GEANT4. To check the simulation chain, we compare the simulated signals produced by cosmic muons at various zenith angles with experimental data from a special Cherenkov detector equipped with a muon hodoscope. The...

Performance of the Pierre Auger Observatory Surface Detector

The Surface Detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory will consist of 1600 water Cherenkov tanks sampling ground particles of air showers produced by energetic cosmic rays. The arrival times are obtained from GPS and power is provided by solar panels. The construction of the array is nearly completed and a large number of detectors has been operational for more than three years. In this paper th...

Azimuthal asymmetry in the risetime of the surface detector signals of the Pierre Auger Observatory

Reconstruction accuracy of the surface detector array of the Pierre Auger

The reconstruction of extensive air showers (arrival direction, core position and energy estimation) by the surface detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory is discussed together with the corresponding accuracy. We determine the angular reconstruction accuracy as a function of the station multiplicity by using two different aproaches. We discuss statistical and systematic uncertainties in the d...

Performance of the Pierre Auger Observatory Surface Array

The surface detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory is a 1600 water Cherenkov tank array on a triangular 1.5 km grid. The signals from each tank are read out using three 9” photomultipliers and processed at a sampling frequency of 40 MHz, from which a local digital trigger efficiently selects shower candidates. GPS signals are used for time synchronization and a wireless communication system c...