arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Gordon B. Thomson.
We summarize the remarkable recent progress in ultra-high energy cosmic ray physics and astronomy enabled by the current generation of cosmic ray observatories. We discuss the primary objectives for future measurements and describe the plans for near-term enhancements of existing experiments as well as the next generation of observatories.
An atmospheric transparency was measured using a LIDAR with a pulsed UV laser (355nm) at the observation site of Telescope Array in Utah, USA. The measurement at night for two years in $2007\sim 2009$ revealed that the extinction coefficient by aerosol at the ground level is $0.033^{+0.016}_{-0.012} \rm km^{-1}$ and the vertical aerosol optical depth at 5km above the ground is $0.035^{+0.019}_{-0.013}$. A model of the altitudinal aerosol distribution was built based on these measurements for the analysis of atmospheric attenuation of the fluorescence light generated by ultra high energy cosmic rays.
The Telescope Array (TA) is the largest experiment in the northern hemisphere studying ultrahigh energy cosmic rays. TA is a hybrid experiment, which means it has two detector systems: a surface detector and a fluorescence detector. In this paper we report on results from TA on the spectrum, composition, and anisotropy of cosmic rays. The spectrum measured by the TA surface detector, cosmic ray composition measured with the TA fluorescence detectors operating in stereoscopic mode, and a search for correlations between the pointing directions of cosmic rays, seen by the surface detector, and AGN's are presented.