First Results from the IceTop Air Shower Array

Understand

IceTop is a 1 km^2 air shower detector presently under construction as a part of the IceCube Observatory at South Pole.

• It will consist of 80 detector stations, each equipped with two ice Cherenkov tanks, which cover 1 km^2.
• In 2008, the detector is half completed.
• One of the design goals of the detector is to investigate cosmic rays in the energy range from the knee up to approaching 1 EeV and study the mass composition of primary cosmic rays.