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Searching for slow-developing cosmic-ray showers: looking for evidence of exotic primaries at the Pierre Auger Observatory
Mayotte, Eric William
Mayotte, Eric William
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2016
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The central purpose of this research was to add the event propagation velocity to the list of shower parameters that the Florescence Detector of Pierre Auger Observatory is capable of measuring. This capability was then leveraged to differentiate exotic slow moving events from the rest of the cosmic ray flux. Clearly, by relativistic necessity, all known cosmic ray primaries can only cause a measurable extensive air shower at velocities indistinguishably close to the speed of light. Therefore any accurate observation of an event propagating slower than the speed of light would provide an unmistakable indicator of new physics. A particle must possess very specific characteristics in order to be capable of producing a slow shower. High mass Strangelets, macroscopic dark matter, and super-symmetric Q-Balls were identified as strong candidates. Theory supporting high mass Strangelets and macroscopic dark matter appeared too late for full inclusion in this work, however super-symmetric Q-Balls were thoroughly examined. CORSIKA simulations were used to show that the fluorescence detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory has sensitivity to Q-Balls with a mass M_Q > 3.25 E 27 GeV / c^2 while the surface detector is sensitive at a mass M_Q > 1.15 E 27 GeV/c^2. The Pierre Auger Observatory was shown to be capable of accurately measuring a wide range of velocities with two independent methods. These methods were applied to 7 years of data and one candidate slow event was identified. This candidate measurement proved to be due to a rare and interesting, but ultimately, non-exotic effect, which when accounted for resulted in the event being measured normally. As a result of this, no exotic candidate events were found in the search. Recommendations are made for improving the result and promising alternative search methods are presented.
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