Speaker
John Krizmanic
(USRA/CRESST/NASA/GSFC)
Description
The Non-Imaging CHErenkov Array (NICHE) will eventually measure the flux and nuclear composition of cosmic rays from below $10^{15}$ eV to $10^{18}$ eV by using measurements of the amplitude and time-spread of the air-shower Cherenkov signal to achieve a robust event-by-event measurement of XMax and energy. NICHE will have sufficient area and angular acceptance to have significant overlap with TA/ TALE, within which NICHE is located, in both fluorescence and Cherenkov measurements allowing for energy cross-calibration. In order to quantify NICHE’s ability to measure the cosmic ray nuclear composition, two different cosmic ray composition models, one based on the poly-gonato model of J. Hörandel (AstroPart 19, 2003) and the other based on the H4a model of T. Gaisser (Astropart 35, 2012), using simulated $X_{Max}$ distributions of the composite composition as a function of energy. These composition distributions were then unfolded into individual components via an analysis technique that included NICHE’s simulated $X_{Max}$ and energy resolution performance as well as the effects of finite event statistics as a function of measured energy. In this talk, NICHE’s ability to distinguish between these two CR composition evolution models and determine the individual components as a function of energy will be presented.
| Registration number following "ICRC2015-I/" | 109 |
|---|---|
| Collaboration | -- not specified -- |
Author
John Krizmanic
(USRA/CRESST/NASA/GSFC)
Co-authors
Douglas Bergman
(University of Utah)
Yoshiki Tsunesada
(Tokyo Institute of Technology)
