Depth of maximum of air-shower profiles: testing the compatibility of the measurements at the Pierre Auger Observatory and the Telescope Array

Abstract

The Pierre Auger Observatory (Auger) and the Telescope Array (TA), located, respectively, in the Southern and Northern hemispheres, are the largest ultra-high-energy cosmic ray (UHECR) observatories. The Auger and TA Collaborations have collected unprecedented statistics providing us with a unique opportunity to search for the differences between the UHECR energy spectra and mass compositions in the complementary sky regions. To correctly attribute such differences to the properties of the UHECR sources or propagation, the systematic effects in the measurements of each observatory should be considered properly. In this context, the task of the Auger - TA mass composition working group is to identify possible differences of astrophysical origin in the measurements of the depth of the maximum of air-shower profiles, Xmax, performed at both observatories using the fluorescence technique. Due to distinct approaches to event selection and analysis at Auger and TA, the working group uses a specially designed method to transfer the Auger Xmax distributions into the TA detector. To this end, dedicated air-shower and detector simulations for the TA Black Rock Mesa and Long Ridge fluorescence detector stations were performed with the Sibyll 2.3d hadronic interaction model. From the comparison of the first two moments and the shapes of Xmax distributions for energies above 1018.2 eV, no significant differences between the Auger and TA measurements were found.