1. Status and first results of the KASCADE-Grande experiment
ISCRA 06 – Erice 23/06/ Fabiana Cossavella for the KASCADE-Grande collaboration

2. Outline Motivation for KASCADE-Grande Experimental set-up
Reconstruction of EAS with KASCADE-Grande
First Analysis
ISCRA 06 – Erice 23/06/ Fabiana Cossavella for the KASCADE-Grande collaboration

3. ? Motivation for KASCADE-Grande
energy spectrum and composition 1016eV-1018eV:
iron knee ?
origin of the knee ?
galactic to extragalactic transition?
Testing hadronic interaction models
Anisotropies ?
ISCRA 06 – Erice 23/06/ Fabiana Cossavella for the KASCADE-Grande collaboration

4. KASCADE’s results:
KASCADE
Main results keep stable independent of method or model:
knee caused by light primaries
positions of knee vary with primary elemental group
no (interaction) model can describe the data consistently
KASCADE collaboration, Astroparticle Physics 24 (2005) 1-25, astro-ph/
ISCRA 06 – Erice 23/06/ Fabiana Cossavella for the KASCADE-Grande collaboration

5. = KArlsruhe Shower Core and Array DEtector + Grande
KASCADE-Grande
= KArlsruhe Shower Core and Array DEtector + Grande
and LOPES
Measurements of air showers in the energy range E0 = 100 TeV - 1 EeV
ISCRA 06 – Erice 23/06/ Fabiana Cossavella for the KASCADE-Grande collaboration

6. Detected EAS component
The experimental set-up
Detector
Detected EAS component
Sensitive area (m2)
Grande
Charged particles
37x10
Piccolo
8x10
KASCADE array e/g
Electrons, g
490
KASCADE array m
Muons
(Emth=230 MeV)
622
MTD
Muons (Tracking) (Emth=800 MeV)
3x128
MWPCs/LSTs
(Emth=2.4 GeV)
3x129
LOPES 30
Radio
Trigger Plane
(Emth=490 MeV)
208
Calorimeter
Hadrons
9x304
The strength of KASCADE-Grande is the multi observables information
ISCRA 06 – Erice 23/06/ Fabiana Cossavella for the KASCADE-Grande collaboration

7. The KASCADE Array 252 detectors 3.2 m2 each 13 m distant 200 x 200 m2
e/g : liquid, 48 mm
m : plastic, 30 mm

8. The GRANDE Array The detector station The DAQ Peak sensing ADC:
16 plastic scintillator (NE102A) 80x80x4 cm3
Mixers, amplifiers, discriminators
HV divider
Steel box
4 low gain PMTs
16 high gain PMTs
The DAQ
Peak sensing ADC:
Particle density range: 104 m.i.p./10m2
TDC: 0.8 ns resolution
Flash ADC…
37 Stations of plastic scintillators 10 m2
140 m average distance
0.5 km2 total surface
ISCRA 06 – Erice 23/06/ Fabiana Cossavella for the KASCADE-Grande collaboration

9. The Grande Flash ADC system
Flash-ADC system for the Grande array
with optical links and a ring buffer system
self triggering (no global trigger)
 full signal information of the detectors
High precision data from Grande array
ISCRA 06 – Erice 23/06/ Fabiana Cossavella for the KASCADE-Grande collaboration

10. KASCADE-Grande : Trigger
trigger efficiency
The trigger system
area
Trigger rate
Number of events E>…
Trigger (Grande)
18 clusters
4/7 coincidence  5 Hz
7/7 coincidence  0.5 Hz → sent to all the other components.
ISCRA 06 – Erice 23/06/ Fabiana Cossavella for the KASCADE-Grande collaboration

11. KASCADE-Grande : single event measurement
lateral distribution of a single event
measured by KASCADE-Grande:
E021017eV, =33o
ISCRA 06 – Erice 23/06/ Fabiana Cossavella for the KASCADE-Grande collaboration

12. KASCADE-Grande : Reconstruction steps
1) core position and angle-of-incidence
from Grande array data
2a) shower size (charged particles)
2b) muon number
from KASCADE muon detectors
3) electron number
from Grande by subtraction of muon content
4) two dimensional size spectrum for the analysis
ISCRA 06 – Erice 23/06/ Fabiana Cossavella for the KASCADE-Grande collaboration

13. Reconstruction accuracy
Monte-Carlo studies: 
Sufficient
reconstruction
accuracies for
core
direction
shower size
muon number
ISCRA 06 – Erice 23/06/ Fabiana Cossavella for the KASCADE-Grande collaboration

14. Reconstruction : comparison Grande – KASCADE array
Event Selection:
At least 10 out of 32 pmt
inside a KASCADE cluster
7/7 coincindence in Grande
DEmax in Grande Station 7
0 m < rKA < 90 m
Log NeKA > 6.0
0.4<sGrande<1.4
Grande Station 7
ISCRA 06 – Erice 23/06/ Fabiana Cossavella for the KASCADE-Grande collaboration

15. Reconstruction : comparison Grande – KASCADE array
core position
shower size
Red = x coord.
(East-West)
Blue = y coord.
(North-South)
mean:
rms:
ISCRA 06 – Erice 23/06/ Fabiana Cossavella for the KASCADE-Grande collaboration

16. Reconstruction : comparison Grande – KASCADE array
arrival direction
1015 eV <E0< 1016 eV
 ~ 1°
g ~ 0.8°
 < 40°
ISCRA 06 – Erice 23/06/ Fabiana Cossavella for the KASCADE-Grande collaboration

17. KASCADE-Grande: lateral distributions
Averaged electron lateral distribution
ISCRA 06 – Erice 23/06/ Fabiana Cossavella for the KASCADE-Grande collaboration

18. KASCADE-Grande: lateral distributions
Averaged muon lateral distribution per
reconstructed total muon number
ISCRA 06 – Erice 23/06/ Fabiana Cossavella for the KASCADE-Grande collaboration

19. KASCADE-Grande : first analysis
Unfolding of
2-dimensional shower size spectrum possible
 composition
Glasstetter et al. –
KASCADE-Grande coll.,
ICRC (2005) Pune, India
ISCRA 06 – Erice 23/06/ Fabiana Cossavella for the KASCADE-Grande collaboration

20. Next steps …
reduction of uncertanties on electron and muon number reconstruction: azimuthal asymmetries in inclined showers
ISCRA 06 – Erice 23/06/ Fabiana Cossavella for the KASCADE-Grande collaboration

21. Conclusions
KASCADE-Grande in continuous and stable data taking since 2004
The detector has been studied and understood
The performances of the detector look promising
First analysis show reasonable preliminary results
Lot of physics to explore…
ISCRA 06 – Erice 23/06/ Fabiana Cossavella for the KASCADE-Grande collaboration

22. ISCRA 06 – Erice 23/06/06 Fabiana Cossavella for the KASCADE-Grande collaboration