Prof. Alan Watson
Professor of Physics
Telephone:+44(0)113 2333888
Fax:+44(0)113 2333900
Astrophysics
I have interests in all aspects of high energy astroparticle physics,
with special interest in the very highest energy cosmic rays. I was head
of the Haverah Park extensive air shower project from 1976 until its closure
in the early 1990s. This project produced the first evidence for the absence
of the celebrated Greisen-Kuzmin-Zatsepin cut-off in the cosmic ray energy
spectrum above 4.10^19 eV, in addition to providing key data relating to
the arrival distribution and mass composition of cosmic rays.
The Haverh Park group was also involved in searches for gamma ray sources
at energies around 1 PeV. More recently research interests of broadened
to embrace work at the South Pole aimed at elucidating the mass composition
of cosmicr rays in the region of the knee at 1 PeV using a shower array
and the AMANDA neutrino detector.
Interest in the highest energy cosmic rays continues through collaboration
with the Auger project, a world wide effort to construct detectors of 3000
sqkm in Argentina and the USA to push knowledge of the highest energy cosmic
rays still further.
'Arrival Directions of the most energetic cosmic rays'
T Stanev, P
L Bierman, J Lloyd-Evans, J P Rachen and A A Watson Physical Review Letters
75 3056 1995 'The Highest Energy Particles in Nature'
A A Watson Proceedings
of the 1994 Snowmass Summer Study: Particle and Nuclear Astrophysics and
Cosmology in the next Millennium Editors E W Kolb and R D Peccei, World
Scientific pp126 - 138
'Search for point sources of Ultrahigh energy gamma rays in the southern hemisphere with the South Pole Air Shower Experiment'
J van Stekelenborg et al Phys Rev D 45 4504 1993
other links:
- http://www-lpnhep.in2p3.fr/auger/welcome.html