ForewordThe Pierre Auger Observatory has begun a major Upgrade of its already impressive capabilities, with an emphasis on improved mass composition determination using the surface detectors of the Observatory. Known as AugerPrime, the upgrade will include new 4 m 2 plastic scintillator detectors on top of all 1660 water-Cherenkov detectors, updated and more flexible surface detector electronics, a large array of buried muon detectors, and an extended duty cycle for operations of the fluorescence detectors.This Preliminary Design Report was produced by the Collaboration in April 2015 as an internal document and information for funding agencies. It outlines the scientific and technical case for AugerPrime 1 . We now release it to the public via the arXiv server. We invite you to review the large number of fundamental results already achieved by the Observatory and our plans for the future.The Pierre Auger Collaboration 1 As a result of continuing R&D, slight changes have been implemented in the baseline design since this Report was written. These changes will be documented in a forthcoming Technical Design Report. ix x Executive Summary Present Results from the Pierre Auger ObservatoryMeasurements of the Auger Observatory have dramatically advanced our understanding of ultra-high energy cosmic rays. The suppression of the flux around 5×10 19 eV is now confirmed without any doubt. Strong limits have been placed on the photon and neutrino components of the flux indicating that "top-down" source processes, such as the decay of superheavy particles, cannot account for a significant part of the observed particle flux. A largescale dipole anisotropy of ∼7% amplitude has been found for energies above 8×10 18 eV. In addition there is also an indication of the presence of a large scale anisotropy below the ankle. Particularly exciting is the observed behavior of the depth of shower maximum with energy, which changes in an unexpected, non-trivial way. Around 3×10 18 eV it shows a distinct change of slope with energy, and the shower-to-shower variance decreases. Interpreted with the leading LHC-tuned shower models, this implies a gradual shift to a heavier composition. A number of fundamentally different astrophysical model scenarios have been developed to describe this evolution. The high degree of isotropy observed in numerous tests of the small-scale angular distribution of UHECR above 4×10 19 eV is remarkable, challenging original expectations that assumed only a few cosmic ray sources with a light composition at the highest energies. Interestingly, the largest departures from isotropy are observed for cosmic rays with E > 5.8×10 19 eV in ∼20 • sky-windows. Due to a duty cycle of ∼15% of the fluorescence telescopes, the data on the depth of shower maximum extend only up to the flux suppression region, i.e. 4×10 19 eV. Obtaining more information on the composition of cosmic rays at higher energies will provide crucial means to discriminate between the model classes and to understand the origin of the observed flux suppre...

The complete electroweak O(α) corrections have been calculated for the chargedcurrent four-fermion production processes e + e − → ν τ τ + µ −ν µ , udµ −ν µ , and udsc. Here, technical details of this calculation are presented. These include the algebraic reduction of spinor chains to a few standard structures and the consistent implementation of the finite width of the W boson. To this end, a generalization of the complex-mass scheme to the one-loop level is proposed, and the practical application of this method is described. Finally, the effects of the complete O(α) corrections to various differential cross sections of physical interest are discussed and compared to predictions based on the double-pole approximation, revealing that the latter approximation is not sufficient to fully exploit the potential of a future linear collider in an analysis of W-boson pairs at high energies.August 2011 1 Some of the problems appearing in a first attempt of such a calculation were already described in Ref. [ 25]. 2 The recently proposed approach [ 35] to describe unstable particles within an effective field theory is equivalent to a pole expansion.

The attenuation of the electron shower size beyond the shower maximum is studied with the KASCADE extensive air shower experiment in the primary energy range of about 10 14 − 10 16 eV. Attenuation and absorption lengths are determined by applying different approaches, including the method of constant intensity, the decrease of the flux of extensive air showers with increasing zenith angle, and its variation with ground pressure. We observe a significant dependence of the results on the applied method. The determined values of the attenuation length ranges from 175 to 196 g/cm 2 and of the absorption length from 100 to 120 g/cm 2 . The origin of these differences is discussed emphasizing the influence of intrinsic shower fluctuations.

Abstract:The complete matrix elements for e + e − → 4f and e + e − → 4f γ are calculated in the Electroweak Standard Model for polarized massless fermions. The matrix elements for all final states are reduced to a few compact generic functions. Monte Carlo generators for e + e − → 4f and e + e − → 4f γ are constructed. We compare different treatments of the finite widths of the electroweak gauge bosons; in particular, we include a scheme with a complex gauge-boson mass that obeys all Ward identities. The detailed discussion of numerical results comprises integrated cross sections as well as photon-energy distributions for all different final states.