Speaker
Description
The Pierre Auger Observatory,beyond its primary focus on cosmic rays, also yields valuable results in cosmogeophysics.. Over the past decade, its fluorescence detector (FD) has captured ELVES, light emissions from the upper mesosphere caused by lightning. Exploiting high time resolution, we validated model predictions on double and triple ELVES. Moreover, the FD traces hinted at observing other transient luminous events (TLEs), such as halos, promoting the installation of a dedicated camera in December 2023 to detect their optical counterparts. It has already registered several SPRITES. The surface detector (SD) captures Cherenkov signals from TGFs, complementing FD with near-field cosmogeophysics data. The time resolution of the order of tens of ns and the possibility to sample the whole TGF footprint unlike in the other experiments designed for TGF detection allows us to constrain production mechanisms. Additionally, the SD has been recording low threshold event rates for 16 years to study the solar influence on low-energy cosmic-ray flux with advanced spectral techniques.
