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The Haverah Park air-shower experiment recorded over 8500 events with primary energy 10 to the 18th power eV between 1963 and 1983. An analysis of these events for anisotropies in celestial and galactic coordinates is reported. No very striking anisotropies are observed.
The Earth's atmosphere is continually being bombarded by primary cosmic ray particles which are generally believed to be high-energy nuclei. The fact that the majority of cosmic ray primaries are charged particles and that space is permeated with random magnetic fields, means that the particles do not travel in straight lines. The arrival time distribution of EAS may also transfer some information about the primary particles. Actually, if the particles come to our Earth in a completely random process, the arrival time distribution of pairs of successive particles should fit an exponential law. The work reported here was arried out at Sydney University from May 1982 to January 1983. All the data are used to plot the arrival-time distribution of the events, that is, the distribution of time-separation between consecutive events on a 1 minute bin size. During this period more than 2300 showers were recorded. The results are discussed and compared with that of some other experiments.
It is shown in this paper that the experimental data on extensive air showers at the energy interval 10 to the 15th power - 10 to the 17th power eV seems to be described best if it is assumed that the Galactic cosmic rays are described by some sort of a two component picture. The first component is of a mixed composition similar to that at lower energies and the second is dominated by protons. Overall spectrum starts to be enriched in protons at energies about 10 to the 15th power eV bu the effective mass of the primaries remains constant up to energies around 10 to the 16th power eV. That results from the fact that composition gradually changes from multi-component to mixture of protons and heavies. That picture receives also some sort of support from recent observations of relatively high number of nergetic protons in JACEE and Concorde experiments.
The extragalactic charged particles are reflecting from the Galaxy by its magnetic field. Assuming magnetic field in the Galaxy as quasilongitudinal, the mean transparency of Galaxy has been evaluated for extragalactic protons defined as a fraction of particles at a given energy from a given direction passing by the galactic plane. The anisotropy caused by the Galactic magnetic field reflection of protons can explain observed arrival directions of extensive air showers at large angle to the galactic plane. Our analysis shows that the increase with energy observed in sin b sup 11 is self-consistent with changing in the cosmic ray energy spectrum at high energy (E 10 to the 19th power eV) in the case when extragalactic cosmic ray source with spectral index -2.2 is at the position of the Virgo Cluster.
The positron data gathered in conjunction with electron data published elsewhere is reported. The basic recognition scheme was to look for low mass positive particles that cause a cascade in a 7 radiation length shower counter. The mass criteria is imposed by selecting particles that were accompanied by Cherenkov light but whose rigidity was below the proton Cherenkov threshold. Thus the proton Cherenkov threshold represents an upper limit to the range of the experiment.
The plan of an extensive air shower experiment 2.200 m above sea level for the detection of 10 to the 14th power eV to 10 to the 17th power eV gamma rays from sources in the declination band 0 deg to + 60 deg is described. The site selection, detector array and electronic layout are detailed.
The chief difficulty in studying the highest energy cosmic rays is the extremely low intensity, only approximately 5 particles per sq km sr century above 10 to the 20th power eV. Instead of attacking the problem by assembling all of the available resources in one place, as has been done in the past, a way that the task can be performed at much less cost per unit sensitive area is suggested, by using numerous inexpensive mini arrays operating independently of each other. In addition to the quantities usually observed, each mini array will record shower particle arrival time distributions. At 10 to the 20th power eV the saving in cost per primary particle is estimated to be a factor of 10 or better, compared to methods now in use, even for mini arrays newly built from scratch for just this purpose.
The air shower array-telescopes which are currently being used to search for and study point sources of UHE gamma-rays have angular resolution similar to 1 deg, limited by either the small total area of particle detectors or poor timing resolution. As the signal to noise ratio depends sensitively on the angular resolution, it seems certain that this figure will quickly be surpassed when second generation instruments come into operation. Since the trajectories of galactic cosmic rays with E 100,000 GeV are practically straight lines on scales of 1 A.U. or less, these new instruments will be able to observe a shadow cast by the Moon (angular diameter 0.5 deg). Although the angular diameter of the Sun is practically the same, its shadow will be more complex because of its magnetic field. Thus, high angular resolution observations of the Sun afford a means of investigating the solar magnetic field, and also the charge composition of cosmic rays, including the ratio of antiprotons to protons.
Data from underground muon telescopes in New Mexico and Bolivia are analyzed in sidereal time and anti-sidereal time in the rigidity range 20 GV to a few 100's of GV. Using both vertical and north- and south- pointing telescopes in both hemispheres, a latitude range of 70 N to 50 S is covered. It is shown that there is an anti-sidereal variation of the P 1 over 2 type, having opposite phase in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, and maximum amplitude at mid latitudes. The anti-sidereal data are used to correct the sidereal data, using the Nagashima method (Nagashima, 1984); the resulting corrected sidereal vectors for northern hemisphere telescopes have their sidereal maxima close to 3h sidereal time, in reasonable agreement with sidereal data at higher energies from small air showers. The Nagashima correction also eliminates effects due to the reversal of the Sun's polar magnetic field which show up in the uncorrected sidereal data.
The distribution of the maxima of high energy cosmic ray induced extensive air showers in the atmosphere was measured as a function of atmospheric depth. From the exponential tail of this distribution, it was determined that the proton-air inelastic cross section at 30 TeV center-of-mass energy to be 540 + or - 40mb.
It was shown that if unitarity bounds on diffractive cross sections are valid at ultra high energies then diffractive dominance models which ascribe the increase in total hadron-hadron cross sections to diffractive processes only are ruled out. Calculations also show that cosmic ray cross sections derived from air shower experiments at ultra high energies clearly rule out models for hadron-hadron cross sections with nat.log ns energy dependence and favor those with nat.log n(2)s variation.
Spectra of cosmic ray showers associated with hadrons of various energies from 5 to 80 TeV were investigated. Results could be interpreted as scaling violation in the fragmentation region of secondary particles generated in inelastic interactions of primary protons at the energy above 30 TeV.
The results are presented for the systematic measurement of cosmic ray showers in the first carbon chamber of Japan-USSR joint experiment at Pamir Plateau. The intensity and the energy distribution of electromagnetic particles, of hadrons and of families are in good agreement with the results of other mountain experiment if the relative error in energy estimation is taken into consideration.
Anomalous C-jets were measured in Chacaltaya emulsion chamber No.17. Measurement of 150 C-jets nuclear interactions occured in the target layer in the chamber itself with total visible energy greater than 5 TeV was completed. they are recorded in area of 11 sq m, corresponding to 17.1 sq m year exposure. Among them, seven events have no pinaught and two events are peculiar in that three showers out of four show abnormal cascade development. Two show remarkable characteristics indicating that they are coming from exotic interactions in the target layer. Illustrations of these events are presented and the thresholds of this type of event are discussed.
The C-jets and Pb-jets were surveyed on the part of Chacaltaya emulsion chamber No.19 amounting to an exposure of 28.8 sq m yr. It is shown that the adopted events make up an unbiased sample of C-jets for sigma sub E gamma TeV. Mini-Centauro interaction gives the most natural explanation for the eight pinaught-less C-jets with three or more constituent shower core. Out of the eight double-cored pinaught-less events, three are found to have visible invariant masses 1.8 GeV/c. Three Pb-jets-lower are composed of double cores whose respective visible transverse momenta are greater than 0.5 GeV/c, suggesting that they are of Geminion origin or chiron origin. The energies of the parent particles are estimated to be 100 to 200 TeV for all three kinds of events. The implications of this energy estimate and the frequency of observed exotic events are discussed.
X-ray films were exposed inside the ionization calorimeter under 74g/sq cm of carbon and 5 cm of lead. The X-ray film chamber area is 35 sq. m. Moving X-ray films were used, 50% of the events, which succeeded to determine incidence time, were identified with corresponding extensive air showers (EAS). For such events the size spectrum of associated EAS was derived. Two methods of energy measurement using X-ray films and ionization calorimeter were compared. The energy transfer from selected hadron to electromagnetic component is illustrated. It is found that in cascades with high energy release into electromagnetic components the hadron component is practically absent.
The experimental data of extensive air showers (EAS) accompanied by gamma-families, with total energy greater than 10 TeV, were compared with a Monte Carlo simulation with a rising cross section proportional to E sup 0.04 for the p-air inelastic cross section. It is found that the absolute intensity of size spectrum of such EAS is strongly affected by the primary protons intensity at 10 to the 15th power approx. 10 to the 16th power eV region and the experimental size spectrum agrees with the simulated spectra for the p-poor primary composition better than the p-rich one.
In order to get higher efficiencies for detecting hadrons and to make technical improvements in the chamber structure, the Mt. Kambala Emulsion Chamber Collaboration constructed 57 sq. m. of Fe chamber, with thickness 29 c.u.(1c.u.=17.6 mm Fe), using 300 tons of Fe plates and made the first exposure from Sept., 1982 to May, 1984. The photosensitive layers consist of X-ray films of Sakura N type, Fuji No. 100 type and Tianjin III type, some of them contain also emulsion plates of Fuji ET7B type. They are inserted between the Fe plates at 2 c.u., beginning at 5 c.u. from the chamber top. In a number of blocks, 3 mm spacings are provided at every 2 c.u. of Fe plates to facilitate the replacement of photosensitive layers, without disassembling the chamber. On the bottom of the chamber Fe plates of thickness 9 mm are placed in order to shield the chamber from the radioactivities of the ground. An event, numbered K2 58 of visible energy sigma E sub gamma = 7345 TeV was found in this exposure. No obvious halo is seen in the event and all the showers are clearly separated and easy to measure. A brief report of the preliminary results is presented.