Systematic study of atmosphere-induced influences and uncertainties on shower reconstruction at the Pierre Auger Observatory

TL;DR

This paper evaluates how various atmospheric monitoring instruments at the Pierre Auger Observatory influence the accuracy of cosmic ray shower reconstructions, focusing on energy and Xmax estimations.

Contribution

It provides a systematic analysis of atmospheric data's impact on shower reconstruction accuracy, highlighting the importance of atmospheric conditions in cosmic ray measurements.

Findings

Atmospheric data significantly affect shower energy estimates.

Xmax measurements are sensitive to atmospheric uncertainties.

Enhanced atmospheric monitoring improves reconstruction precision.

Abstract

A wide range of atmospheric monitoring instruments is employed at the Pierre Auger Observatory: two laser facilities, elastic lidar stations, aerosol phase function monitors, a horizontal attenuation monitor, star monitors, weather stations, and balloon soundings. We describe the impact of analyzed atmospheric data on the accuracy of shower reconstructions, and in particular study the effect of the data on the shower energy and the depth of shower maximum (Xmax). These effects have been studied using the subset of golden hybrid events - events observed with high quality in the fluorescence and surface detector - used in the calibration of the surface detector energy spectrum.