The apparatus measures the atmospheric showers produced by nuclear interactions of the primary cosmic
particle with air nuclei. The active involvement at this international Observatory with 17 participating countries and more than 50 institutions from all over the world is the major scientific topic of the department. For the first time the observatory combines two measurement techniques – that of surface array covering 3000 km2 of Argentinian pampa and of fluorescence telescopes. Thus the precision of the shower reconstruction is much better than in previous experiments. In close cooperation with Joint Laboratory of Optics of Palacky University and Institute of Physics, the scientific personnel of our department is involved in the construction and the operation of the fluorescence telescopes, in the analysis of the measured showers and also in the atmospheric monitoring. The last activity is necessary for successful unbiased shower reconstruction.
We operate robotic astronomical telescope FRAM that measures atmosphere transparency using immediate brightnesses of standard stars. Another traditional topic of the group is the study of nucleus-nucleus interactions in the shower development at energies far above of those available at current accelerators.
The predictions of various models
of high energy hadronic interactions are tested on the shower data recorded not only by this observatory. Among other topics we are also focused on cosmic rays propagation in the universe, especially on the analysis of the influence of the magnetic fields on the trajectory of charged particles, and we also participate in the searches of sources of ultra-high energy cosmic rays.
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