Measurement of the UHECR energy spectrum using data from the Surface Detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory

Abstract

At the southern site of the Pierre Auger Observatory, which is close to completion, an exposure that significantly exceeds the largest forerunner experiments has already been accumulated. We report a measurement of the cosmic ray energy spectrum based on the high statistics collected by the surface detector. The methods developed to determine the spectrum from reconstructed observables are described. The energy calibration of the observables, which exploits the correlation of surface detector data with fluorescence measurements in hybrid events, is presented in detail. The methods are simple and robust, exploiting the combination of fluorescence detector (FD) and surface detector (SD) and do not rely on detailed numerical simulation or any assumption about the chemical composition. Besides presenting statistical uncertainties, we address the impact of systematic uncertainties.