BlueBook-HighResolutionFlysEyeExperiment(HiRes).docVIP

The University of Tokyo Institute for Cosmic Ray Research Mid-term (2004 - 2009) Maintenance Plan Proposal Book (Blue Book) Cosmic Ray Telescope Project Cosmic Ray Telescope グル - プ December 23, 2002 English Translation by the HiRes Group July 24-29, 2003 1. Objectives The Universe has interested human beings since before the dawn of History. Starting with optical band, Astronomy has continued to progress and has expanded into radio, UV, X-ray, and Gamma ray regions, and also into a new field with neutrinos. On the other hand, with the accomplishment of particle physics, Astronomy has become Astrophysics. In spite of the history of Astrophysics in which many remarkable discoveries of astronomical phenomena and studies of the science behind them have made, for example reference [1], there remains some unsolved mysteries. On of them would be the origin of the super high energy cosmic rays. The highest energy cosmic rays (CRs) that people have found so far, have about 1020 eV, in other words, more than 16 J. It is widely believed that the origin of these high energy cosmic rays, which have energies as large as the Plank energy per particle, would be related to super high-energy astronomical phenomena or remnant particles from the Big Bang. Therefore, solving the mystery of extremely high energy cosmic rays (EHECRs) is directly connected with most violent astronomical phenomena and Big Bang mechanisms. Also, it is not well understood how these EHECRs arrive at the Earth. According to Special Relativity, due to the interaction with cosmic background radiation (CBR), EHECR loses its energy so that they can’t travel more than 50Mpc (150Mly). Although the energy threshold for the particles which reach to the Earth has been predicted (GZK cutoff, will be explained later), 10 events of particles which have more than the GZK cutoff energy have detected at AGASA cosmic ray observatory in Akeno (figure 1). In addition to that, the result shows that there might be a poss