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Conference: Bucharest University Faculty of Physics 2022 Meeting

Section: Nuclear and Elementary Particles Physics

Title:

Radio signals from highly energetic extensive air showers: status and new prospective

Authors:

Paula Gina ISAR (1)

Affiliation:

1) Institute of Space Science (ISS), Bucharest-Măgurele, Romania

E-mail

isar@spacescience.ro

Keywords:

cosmic rays, inclined air showers, radio detection, Monte Carlo simulations, Pierre Auger Observatory

Abstract:

Over the last decade, radio detection of extensive air showers has matured from small prototype arrays, like LOPES [1, 2], to large-scale cosmic-ray experiments, like the Pierre Auger Observatory [3]. The technique relies on the measurement of coherent radio emission dominantly arising from secondary charge particles deflected in the Earth’s magnetic field, with secondary radiation arising from negative charge excess present in air showers [4]. In contrast to vertical air showers (with zenith angles below 60 degrees), the inclined ones illuminate large ground areas of several km2, with radio signals detectable in the 30 to 80 MHz band [5]. Since the area illuminated by radio signals grows with the shower’s zenith angle, the radio detector needs to cover large arrays, as it is the case of AugerPrime, i.e. the upgrade of Auger, which facilitates the installation of radio antennas on top of each surface particle detector, covering thus the entire Auger array of 3000 km2 with complementary detectors (water tanks, scintillators, radio stations), of 100% duty cycle each, at the same place. This is particularly attractive for radio detection on energy estimation of cosmic rays [6] and observation of inclined air showers. In this paper we look at the response of a model hexagonal detector [7], by using a sample of CoREAS simulations [8, 9] of 37 events for two primaries (proton and iron), two energies (1018 and 1019 eV), three zenith angles (60, 70, 80 degrees) and respectively eight azimuth angles (0, 45, 90, 135, 180, 225, 360 degrees). This study comes in the support to the world’s largest cosmic ray experiment, the Pierre Auger Observatory, which currently is in the upgrade phase, aiming to improve its detectors and consequently rise statistics, in order to elucidate mysteries of the most energetic cosmic rays.

References:

1. Falcke, H., Apel, W.D. et all, The LOPES Collaboration, Detection and imaging of atmospheric radio flashes from cosmic ray air showers, Nature, Volume 435, Issue 7040, pp. 313-316 (2005).

2. Schroeder, F., Link, K., Apel, W.D., et all, the LOPES Collboration, Interferometric radio Measurements of Air Showers with LOPES: Final Results, 35th International Cosmic Ray Conference. 10-20 July, 2017. Bexco, Busan, Korea, Proceedings of Science, Vol. 301.

3. Aab, A., et all, The Pierre Auger Collaboration, The Pierre Auger Observatory and its Upgrade, Science Reviews - from the end of the world (Argentina) Vol. 1, No. 4, September 2020 // pp. 8-33

4. Aab, A., et all, The Pierre Auger Collaboration, Probing the radio emission from cosmic-ray-induced air showers by polarization measurements, Phys. Rev. D 89, 052002 (2014)

5. Aab, A., et all, The Pierre Auger Collaboration, Observation of inclined EeV air showers with the radio detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory, JCAP10 (2018) 026

6. Aab, A., et all, The Pierre Auger Collaboration, Energy Estimation of Cosmic Rays with the Engineering Radio Array of the Pierre Auger Observatory, Phys. Rev. D 93, 122005 (2016)

7. Isar, P. G., Hirnea, D., THE RESPONSE OF A MODEL HEXAGONAL DETECTOR AREA TO RADIO SIGNALS FROM ULTRA-HIGH ENERGY COSMIC RAYS AIR SHOWERS, submitted to Rom. Rep. Phys., October 2021

8. Huege,T.,“CoREAS1.4 User’sManual”, 2019: https://web.ikp.kit.edu/huege/downloads/coreas-manual.pdf

9. Heck, D., Knapp, J., Capdevielle, J. N., Schatz, G., and Thouw, T. “CORSIKA: a Monte Carlo code to simulate extensive air showers”, 1998.

Acknowledgement:

This work was supported by Romanian Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digitization, CNCS/CCCDI UEFISCDI, grant no. PN19150201/16N/2019 within the National Nucleus Program, and projects number PN-III-P1-1.2- PCCDI-2018-0839, PN-III-P1-1.1-TE-2021-0924/TE57/2022, within PNCDI III.