Philipp Heimann Siegen

On the identification of single proton induced events(pdf)

A possibility to identify extensive air showers induced by primary protons is a key element in a number of analyses such as studies of hadronic interactions, of anisotropies and in testing of astrophysical scenarios. We present a statistical approach to the search of proton candidates in hybrid Auger data on the basis of the measured depths of the shower maxima X_max. Quantitative estimates of the probability that a particular event is produced by heavier, than proton, primary nuclei are performed using Gumbel parametrization of X_max distributions, at present. Only the statistical uncertainties on the individual measured X_max are taken into account, inclusion of systematic uncertainties and of detector effects (resolution and acceptance) is foreseen in the future. The performance of the method is tested with a toy Monte-Carlo study.