The Pierre Auger Collaboration invites external scientists to propose research projects using the Observatory’s data. The proposals are evaluated and approved by a Program Committee (PC) based on scientific merit.
This call is open to all external user groups, with the majority of the users working in EU and/or Associated Countries and not affiliated with the host country Argentina. The access includes the logistical, technological and scientific support and the specific training. Additionally financial support for travel and accommodation could be offered for selected user(s). Only the user groups of approved proposals may benefit from the access and are allowed to disseminate the results they have generated under this program.
Detailed information about the proposal submission preparation is given below.
Program Cycle
The cycle 1 of transnational access to Pierre Auger Observatory data is opened up to the submission deadline: May 22, 2026, 12:00 UTC.
Following submission, the PC will evaluate proposals with this cycle’s review conducted by a joint KM3NeT+Pierre Auger PC. This includes several members from both KM3NeT and the Pierre Auger Collaborations as well as from other related experiments. External scientists may act as Principal Investigators (PI) or co-Investigators on Pierre Auger Observatory proposals provided they agree to a Non-Disclosure Agreement with the Pierre Auger Collaboration. (See below “Guide for proposal submission”).
Data and Authorship
The data of the Pierre Auger Observatory is proprietary to the Pierre Auger Collaboration. This data may require specific expertise and tools for analysis. Selected members of the Pierre Auger Collaboration, appointed by the Collaboration or proposed by the Principal Investigator (PI) of an external proposal PI, will support external projects through data analysis and publication if the access is granted. Proposals are valid for one year. Authorship details must be defined before submitting a proposal, with the entire Pierre Auger Collaboration listed as authors on any publications reporting this data.
Publications will follow the publication rules of the Pierre Auger Collaboration. A Non-Disclosure Agreement will be signed with external scientists.
Guide for proposal submission
General Information
The Pierre Auger Collaboration is designed to detect and study extensive air showers of energies exceeding the EeV scale and to establish the origin of Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays. The Observatory is sensitive to showers induced by sufficiently energetic photons or neutrinos that also produce extensive air showers.
The Pierre Auger Observatory infrastructure comprises an array of water-Cherenkov detectors (Surface Detector or SD) to detect the particles of the shower front and 27 fluorescence telescopes (Fluorescence Detector or FD) that can detect the fluorescence emission of the air as the shower passes through the atmosphere. It operates in Malargüe, Mendoza, Argentina. The Observatory has recently been upgraded with scintillator plates and radio antennas at the positions of the SD array and a smaller number of underground scintillator plates at selected locations to measure the muons of the shower front. In this call, all data from Phase I (January 2004 to December 2023) of the SD and FD will be made available for external data analysis.
Proposal Submission Preparation
The submission deadline is May 22, 2026, 12:00 UTC. To assess feasibility, please request specific information including whether an existing proposal for a similar analysis is currently being pursued within the Pierre Auger Collaboration. This can be done via the following address: “
Access will be granted to positively evaluated written descriptions of the intended work. The names, nationalities and home institutions of the users are to be provided in a second document. The proposal should be submitted to the following email address:
The Pierre Auger Collaboration is committed to ensuring that the review of proposals is conducted in an equitable and fair manner. To this end, proposals will be evaluated using dual-anonymous peer review. Under this system proposers are unaware of the identity of the review panel members while reviewers are not given explicit knowledge of the proposing team until after the evaluation and rating of all proposals is complete. The objective of dual-anonymous peer review is to minimize the impact of implicit or unconscious bias in the evaluation of a proposal’s merit.
Pierre Auger available data
Depending on the complexity of the proposed analysis and the data required, the Observatory may offer different levels of data.
- Calibrated event list (reconstructed events). These events have been reconstructed using current standard Pierre Auger procedures. They constitute air showers that meet quality criteria enabling reliable reconstruction. The energy calibration of the air showers is based on the absolute calibration of the FD telescopes. Using a high-quality subsample of SD-FD hybrid events, the SD energy reconstruction is calibrated to the FD energy scale and applied to the much larger SD-only data sample. The reanalysis of these data may require proprietary software.
- Related Monte Carlo simulation events. If relevant to the analysis, the Monte Carlo simulation of air showers produced by cosmic rays may also be provided to estimate detector response and performance.
- Final Scientific products. This includes the main scientific products performed by the Collaboration (i.e. energy spectra, anisotropy, muon number, upper-limits of photon and neutrino searches, and upward going showers) using tools available in the Collaboration. Access to these tools can be made available if necessary.
- Selected search lists (selected events). Results of searches for e.g. photons using different shower observables can be provided
- Neutrino sensitivities. Instantaneous effective areas for neutrinos arriving at any given time and from any direction in the sky can be provided including full acceptance and exposure calculations.
The data will be provided on a best-effort basis including the best calibration and software version at the time of the request and will cover the period from January 2004 to December 2023. Data after 2021 correspond to the Phase-I to Phase-II transition and therefore have a decreasing Phase-I data rate. Data will be supplied in simple file formats such as text, root and HDF5.
If required, expertise to analyse and interpret the data will be provided by members of the Pierre Auger Collaboration. This will be either in the ACME expertise centres or directly with other members associated with the proposals. In ACME a support centre may also provide some assistance.
ACME Transnational Access Programme
Further information on this funding action dedicated to observations with the Pierre Auger Observatory can be requested to CONTACT PERSON AUGER.
The ACME project (https://www.acme-astro.eu/ ) enables transnational access (TA) on the basis of scientific merit to a wide range of complementary astroparticle, high-energy and astronomical research infrastructures to perform new science in multi-messenger astrophysics.
