ORCID Profile
0000-0002-1062-5595
Current Organisation
Institute of Nuclear Physics
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Publisher: IOP Publishing
Date: 03-09-2020
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 08-2020
DOI: 10.1140/EPJC/S10052-020-8055-Y
Abstract: The hybrid design of the Pierre Auger Observatory allows for the measurement of the properties of extensive air showers initiated by ultra-high energy cosmic rays with unprecedented precision. By using an array of prototype underground muon detectors, we have performed the first direct measurement, by the Auger Collaboration, of the muon content of air showers between $$2\\times 10^{17}$$ 2 × 10 17 and $$2\\times 10^{18}$$ 2 × 10 18 eV. We have studied the energy evolution of the attenuation-corrected muon density, and compared it to predictions from air shower simulations. The observed densities are found to be larger than those predicted by models. We quantify this discrepancy by combining the measurements from the muon detector with those from the Auger fluorescence detector at $$10^{{17.5}}\\, {\\mathrm{eV}} $$ 10 17.5 eV and $$10^{{18}}\\, {\\mathrm{eV}} $$ 10 18 eV . We find that, for the models to explain the data, an increase in the muon density of $$38\\%$$ 38 % $$\\pm 4\\% (12\\%)$$ ± 4 % ( 12 % ) $$\\pm {}^{21\\%}_{18\\%}$$ ± 18 % 21 % for EPOS-LHC , and of $$50\\% (53\\%)$$ 50 % ( 53 % ) $$\\pm 4\\% (13\\%)$$ ± 4 % ( 13 % ) $$\\pm {}^{23\\%}_{20\\%}$$ ± 20 % 23 % for QGSJetII-04 , is respectively needed.
Publisher: American Geophysical Union (AGU)
Date: 04-2020
DOI: 10.1029/2019EA000582
Abstract: Elves are a class of transient luminous events, with a radial extent typically greater than 250 km, that occur in the lower ionosphere above strong electrical storms. We report the observation of 1,598 elves, from 2014 to 2016, recorded with unprecedented time resolution (100 ns) using the fluorescence detector (FD) of the Pierre Auger Cosmic‐Ray Observatory. The Auger Observatory is located in the Mendoza province of Argentina with a viewing footprint for elve observations of km , reaching areas above the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, as well as the Córdoba region, which is known for severe convective thunderstorms. Primarily designed for ultrahigh energy cosmic‐ray observations, the Auger FD turns out to be very sensitive to the ultraviolet emission in elves. The detector features modified Schmidt optics with large apertures resulting in a field of view that spans the horizon, and year‐round operation on dark nights with low moonlight background, when the local weather is favorable. The measured light profiles of 18% of the elve events have more than one peak, compatible with intracloud activity. Within the 3‐year s le, 72% of the elves correlate with the far‐field radiation measurements of the World Wide Lightning Location Network. The Auger Observatory plans to continue operations until at least 2025, including elve observations and analysis. To the best of our knowledge, this observatory is the only facility on Earth that measures elves with year‐round operation and full horizon coverage.
Publisher: IOP Publishing
Date: 07-03-2019
Publisher: American Physical Society (APS)
Date: 16-09-2020
Publisher: American Physical Society (APS)
Date: 16-04-2021
Publisher: American Astronomical Society
Date: 02-02-2018
Publisher: American Physical Society (APS)
Date: 16-09-2020
Publisher: IOP Publishing
Date: 25-01-2021
Publisher: IOP Publishing
Date: 04-2021
DOI: 10.1088/1748-0221/16/04/P04003
Abstract: To obtain direct measurements of the muon content of extensive air showers with energy above 10 16.5 eV, the Pierre Auger Observatory is currently being equipped with an underground muon detector (UMD), consisting of 219 10 m 2 -modules, each segmented into 64 scintillators coupled to silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs). Direct access to the shower muon content allows for the study of both of the composition of primary cosmic rays and of high-energy hadronic interactions in the forward direction. As the muon density can vary between tens of muons per m 2 close to the intersection of the shower axis with the ground to much less than one per m 2 when far away, the necessary broad dynamic range is achieved by the simultaneous implementation of two acquisition modes in the read-out electronics: the binary mode, tuned to count single muons, and the ADC mode, suited to measure a high number of them. In this work, we present the end-to-end calibration of the muon detector modules: first, the SiPMs are calibrated by means of the binary channel, and then, the ADC channel is calibrated using atmospheric muons, detected in parallel to the shower data acquisition. The laboratory and field measurements performed to develop the implementation of the full calibration chain of both binary and ADC channels are presented and discussed. The calibration procedure is reliable to work with the high amount of channels in the UMD, which will be operated continuously, in changing environmental conditions, for several years.
Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Date: 22-09-2017
Abstract: Cosmic rays are high-energy particles arriving from space some have energies far beyond those that human-made particle accelerators can achieve. The sources of higher-energy cosmic rays remain under debate, although we know that lower-energy cosmic rays come from the solar wind. The Pierre Auger Collaboration reports the observation of thousands of cosmic rays with ultrahigh energies of several exa–electron volts (about a Joule per particle), arriving in a slightly dipolar distribution (see the Perspective by Gallagher and Halzen). The direction of the rays indicates that the particles originated in other galaxies and not from nearby sources within our own Milky Way Galaxy. Science , this issue p. 1266 see also p. 1240
Publisher: American Astronomical Society
Date: 10-2020
Abstract: Results of a search for ultra-high-energy neutrinos with the Pierre Auger Observatory from the direction of the blazar TXS 0506+056 are presented. They were obtained as part of the follow-up that stemmed from the detection of high-energy neutrinos and gamma rays with IceCube, Fermi-LAT, MAGIC, and other detectors of electromagnetic radiation in several bands. The Pierre Auger Observatory is sensitive to neutrinos in the energy range from 100 PeV to 100 EeV and in the zenith-angle range from θ = 60° to θ = 95°, where the zenith angle is measured from the vertical direction. No neutrinos from the direction of TXS 0506+056 have been found. The results were analyzed in three periods: one of 6 months around the detection of IceCube-170922 A, coinciding with a flare period of TXS 0506+056, a second one of 110 days during which the IceCube collaboration found an excess of 13 neutrinos from a direction compatible with TXS 0506+056, and a third one from 2004 January 1 up to 2018 August 31, over which the Pierre Auger Observatory has been taking data. The sensitivity of the Observatory is addressed for different spectral indices by considering the fluxes that would induce a single expected event during the observation period. For indices compatible with those measured by the IceCube collaboration the expected number of neutrinos at the Observatory is well below one. Spectral indices as hard as 1.5 would have to apply in this energy range to expect a single event to have been detected.
Publisher: IOP Publishing
Date: 21-10-2020
Publisher: American Astronomical Society
Date: 13-03-2020
Publisher: IOP Publishing
Date: 16-10-2017
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 10-2017
Location: Poland
No related grants have been discovered for Jan Pękala.