In the presence of Her Excellency Ms Jarmila Povejšilová, Ambassador of the Czech Republic to Argentina, her deputy Filip Kanda and the Head of Unit for Research Infrastructures of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic Marek Vyšinka, the Director of the Institute of Physics Michael Prouza signed an agreement to extend the operation of the Pierre Auger Observatory for another 10 years.
The Pierre Auger Observatory is the largest cosmic ray detector in the world, covering an area of 3000 km². Its operation and scientific data analyses require involvement of over 400 scientists from 17 countries. The observatory's goal is to study the most energetic particles in the Universe - ultra-high energy cosmic rays.
Until the end of 2021, the Pierre Auger Observatory was collecting data in an old configuration consisting of water surface stations and an optical fluorescence detector, which the Czech Republic had a major role in building and operating. The data from the first phase changed our understanding of the phenomena associated with the most energetic processes in the Universe.
Scientific breakthroughs have been achieved in several areas, but the new perspectives opened up by these results have necessitated the modernisation of the observatory, whose main objective is to collect information on the mass of primary cosmic rays. To this end, almost every one of the 1660 surface detector stations has been supplemented with a scintillation detector, a radio antenna and new control and detection electronics. The result was an extended detector called AugerPrime.
The Czech group contributed to the modernisation of the Observatory mainly by performing thorough stress tests of all 2000 modules of the new electronics. Fully effective data collection by the upgraded Observatory will start in 2025 and will continue for the next 10 years. The extension of the international agreement will provide the administrative basis for the continued operation of the Pierre Auger Observatory in the upcoming Phase II, in which data will be collected with the improved detector.
The act of signing of the agreements for the Observatory operation extension was preceded by a ceremony attended by representatives of the funding agencies, as well as representatives of the government and local authorities from Argentina and European countries. One of the greatest responses was received by the speech of Ambassador Povejšilová, who stressed that Czech participation in the project was becoming more and more significant as the years went by, and that on 17 November we would celebrate a national holiday which would mark 35 years since the Velvet Revolution, which launched the democratic era of our country and without which our participation in this global project would not have been possible.
16 November 2024 in Malargue, Argentina