Speaker
Description
In 2001, the first water-Cherenkov detector of what would become the Pierre Auger Observatory was installed in the Pampa Amarilla, Argentina. Since then—almost 25 years later—the Observatory has not only been completed and operational since 2004, but has also continually evolved in its instrumentation, results, and scientific scope.
Originally designed to study cosmic rays with energies above $10^{18}$ eV, comprising two main components—an extensive air shower array covering 3000 km$^2$ and a set of 24 fluorescence telescopes—, it has since developed into a multi-energy, multi-detector facility. The Observatory has been augmented with additional instruments: two smaller and denser arrays and one more fluorescence detector to extend the energy range down to $10^{16}$ eV, along with arrays of radio antennas and scintillators—some of them underground—to enhance shower measurements, particularly for characterizing the nature of the primary cosmic particles.
This wealth of instrumentation, along with growing data sets and improved control of systematics, has enabled landmark discoveries in the field of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays. These include the detection of a dipolar anisotropy in the arrival directions of the highest-energy cosmic rays, an unexpected complexity in the suppression at the end of the energy spectrum, and an equally unexpected evolution of cosmic-ray mass with energy. Over the past 25 years, the Observatory has broadened its scientific reach, contributing to the emerging fields of multimessenger astronomy and open science, playing a role in hadronic and particle physics by probing high-energy interactions beyond the LHC’s reach, and expanding into geophysics—particularly atmospheric electricity—and heliospheric and solar physics.
In this presentation, we will offer an overview of the Observatory’s rich and varied scientific harvest, highlighting not only the evolution of its instrumentation and contributions to our understanding of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays—its foundational field—but also its expansion, and results, into other scientific domains.
| Collaboration you are representing | Pierre Auger Collaboration |
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