The Scintillator Surface Detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory

TL;DR

The paper discusses the design, production, testing, and deployment of scintillator surface detectors added to the Pierre Auger Observatory to enhance primary cosmic-ray mass composition measurements by differentiating electromagnetic and muonic components.

Contribution

It introduces the design and implementation of scintillator surface detectors as part of the AugerPrime upgrade to improve cosmic-ray primary mass determination.

Findings

Successful deployment of scintillator detectors in the field

Enhanced ability to distinguish electromagnetic and muonic components

Improved accuracy in primary cosmic-ray mass measurements

Abstract

Data collected so far by the Pierre Auger Observatory have enabled major advances in ultra-high energy cosmic ray physics and demonstrated that improved determination of masses of primary cosmic-ray particles, preferably on an event-by-event basis, is necessary for understanding their origin and nature. Improvement in primary mass measurements was the main motivation for the upgrade of the Pierre Auger Observatory, called AugerPrime. As part of this upgrade, scintillator detectors are added to the existing water-Cherenkov surface detector stations. By making use of the differences in detector response to the electromagnetic particles and muons between scintillator and water-Cherenkov detectors, the electromagnetic and muonic components of cosmic-ray air showers can be disentangled. Since the muonic component is sensitive to the primary mass, such combination of detectors provides a powerful way to improve primary mass composition measurements over the original Auger surface detector design. In this paper, the so-called Scintillator Surface Detectors are discussed, including their design characteristics, production process, testing procedure and deployment in the field.