Large scale anisotropy studies with the Pierre Auger Observatory

Abstract

Completed at the end of 2008, the Pierre Auger Observatory has been continuously operating for more than seven years. We present here the analysis techniques and the results about the search for large scale anisotropies in the sky distribution of cosmic rays, reporting both the phase and the amplitude measurements of the first harmonic modulation in right ascension in different energy ranges above 2.5×1017eV. Thanks to the collected statistics, a sensitivity of 1% at EeV energies can be reached. No significant anisotropies have been observed, upper limits on the amplitudes have been derived and are here compared with the results of previous experiments and with some theoretical expectations.