Speaker
Description
The Underground Muon Detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory features a calorimetric detection mode that estimates the number of muons based on signal charge measurements. This presentation provides an overview of the calibration procedure, revisiting the previously published strategy and identifying a bias introduced by the triggers used to estimate the mean charge deposited by a vertical muon. We demonstrate that calibrating underground detectors requires careful consideration of the interactions of penetrating particles through matter. In devices based on plastic scintillators, energy deposition -and thus the recorded charge- is significantly affected by delta (knock-on) electron production in the surrounding ground as muons traverse the medium. To mitigate this effect, we propose a new calibration strategy that ensures an unbiased muon estimator. This approach is applied to data collected from 2019 to 2024, yielding calibration curves for 105 modules.
| Collaboration(s) | PIERRE AUGER |
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