Author(s): Pierre Auger collaboration (496 authors) ; Abreu, P. ; Andringa, S. ; Assis, P. ; Brogueira, P. ; Cazon, L. ; Conceicao, R. ; Diogo, F. ; Espadanal, J. ; Goncalves, P. ; Oliveira, M. ; Pimenta, M. ; Santo, C.E. ; Santos, E. ; Tome, B.
Date: 2014
Origin: Laboratório de Instrumentação e Física Experimental de Partículas
The Pierre Auger Observatory is the world’s largest cosmic ray observatory. Our current exposure reaches nearly 40,000 km$^{2}$sr and provides us with an unprecedented quality data set. The performance and stability of the detectors and their enhancements are described. Data analyses have led to a number of major breakthroughs. Among these, we discuss the energy spectrum and the searches for large-scale anisotropies. We present analyses of our X$_{max}$ data and show how it can be interpreted in terms of mass composition. We also describe some new analyses that extract mass-sensitive parameters from the 100 % duty cycle surface detector (SD) data. A coherent interpretation of all these recent results opens new directions. The consequences regarding the cosmic ray composition and the properties of ultrahigh-energy cosmic ray (UHECR) sources are briefly discussed.
