The SUGAR Array

The SUGAR array has been discussed in detail by Winn et al.(1986) and references therein. The array was located in northern New South Wales, Australia and was operated during the period January 1968 to February 1979. At its peak development, it consisted of 47 sites covering an effective area of 100km². Each station consisted of two liquid scintillator tanks buried 50m apart. The detectors were sensitive to the muon component of cosmic ray showers. An array event consisted of coincident local events from three or more stations.

Because of the large collecting area of the array, a significant number of events were recorded with energies above 10¹⁹eV. These are of particular interest to us here as such events are the primary interest of the Pierre Auger observatory which will begin operations early in the new millennium and will have a collecting area of 3000km² at each of a southern and a northern location. We note that the Pierre Auger observatory will incorporate an operational philosophy pioneered in the SUGAR array such that detector sites operate independently and have their data combined at a somewhat later stage to provide information for shower analysis. SUGAR thus provides a vehicle for assisting us to prepare for the arrival of the new data.

© Copyright Astronomical Society of Australia 1997