The HiSCORE concept for gamma-ray and cosmic-ray astrophysics beyond 10 TeV

Abstract Air-shower measurements in the primary energy range beyond 10 TeV can be used to address important questions of astroparticle and particle physics. The most prominent among these questions are the search for the origin of charged Galactic cosmic rays and the so-far little understood transition from Galactic to extra-galactic cosmic rays. A very promising avenue towards answering these fundamental questions is the construction of an air-shower detector with sufficient sensitivity for gamma-rays to identify the accelerators and large exposure to achieve accurate spectroscopy of local cosmic rays. With the new ground-based large-area (up to 100 km 2 ) wide-angle ( Ω ∼  0.6–0.85 sr) air-shower detector concept HiSCORE (Hundred ∗ i Square-km Cosmic ORigin Explorer), we aim at exploring the cosmic ray and gamma-ray sky (accelerator-sky) in the energy range from few 10 s of TeV to 1 EeV using the non-imaging air-Cherenkov detection technique. The full detector simulation is presented here. The resulting sensitivity of a HiSCORE-type detector to gamma-rays will extend the energy range so far accessed by other experiments beyond energies of 50–100 TeV, thereby opening up the ultra high energy gamma-ray (UHE gamma-rays, E  > 10 TeV) observation window.