Abstract
EUSO-TA is a cosmic ray detector developed by the JEM-EUSO (Joint Experiment Missions for Extreme Universe Space Observatory) Collaboration, observing during nighttime the fluorescence light emitted along the path of extensive air showers in the atmosphere. It is installed at the Telescope Array site in Utah, USA, in front of the fluorescence detector station at Black Rock Mesa. It serves as a ground-based pathfinder experiment for future space-based missions. EUSO-TA has an optical system with two Fresnel lenses and a focal surface with 6 × 6 multi-anode photomultiplier tubes with 64 channels each, for a total of 2304 channels. The overall field of view is ∼10.6°× 10.6°. This detector technology allows the detection of cosmic ray events with high spatial resolution, having each channel a field of view of about ∼0.2° × 0.2° and a temporal resolution of 2.5 µs. First observations of ultra-high energy cosmic rays revealed the cosmic ray detection capability of EUSO-TA. The foreseen upgrade of EUSO-TA will improve the efficiency of the detector and will increase the statistics of detected events. In this work we present recent results of the detection capability of EUSO-TA and its limits. Moreover, other results about the analysis of laser pulses, stars and meteors will be discussed.
Highlights
EUSO-Telescope Array (TA) [1] is an experiment of the JEM-EUSO program [2], whose aim is to detect, from space, the rare ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs), with energy ∼1020 eV and flux ∼1 particle/km2 per millennium
The detection of UHECRs is possible observing the UV fluorescence light emitted by Nitrogen molecules when extensive air showers induced by UHECRs traverse the atmosphere used as a huge calorimeter
The probability to detect UHECRs is strongly increased from space with respect to ground, since the observed area projected on ground would be up to ∼105 km2, much larger than any extension of a ground-based experiment
Summary
EUSO-TA [1] is an experiment of the JEM-EUSO program [2], whose aim is to detect, from space, the rare ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs), with energy ∼1020 eV and flux ∼1 particle/km per millennium. The detection of UHECRs is possible observing the UV fluorescence light emitted by Nitrogen molecules when extensive air showers induced by UHECRs (hereafter “showers”) traverse the atmosphere used as a huge calorimeter. The probability to detect UHECRs is strongly increased from space with respect to ground, since the observed area projected on ground would be up to ∼105 km, much larger than any extension of a ground-based experiment. It is installed at the Telescope Array (TA) [3] site in Utah (USA), in front of the Black Rock Mesa fluorescence detector (BRM-FD) station [4]. It is possible to detect showers in coincidence with BRM-FDs and pulsed laser shots from the Central Laser Facility (CLF) [5] can be used to test
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