Detecting radio emission from cosmic ray air showers and neutrinos with a digital radio telescope

By Heino Falcke, P. Gorham. 2002

161 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract We discuss the possibilities of measuring ultra-high energy cosmic rays and neutrinos with radio techniques. We review a few of the properties of radio emission from cosmic ray air showers and show how these properties can be explained by coherent “geosynchrotron” emission from electron–positron pairs in the shower as they move through the geomagnetic field. This should allow one to use the radio emission as a useful diagnostic tool for cosmic ray research. A new generation of digital telescopes will make it possible to study this radio emission in greater detail. For example, the planned low-frequency array (LOFAR), operating at 10–200 MHz, will be an instrument uniquely suited to study extensive air showers and even detect neutrino-induced showers on the moon. We discuss sensitivities, count rates and possible detection algorithms for LOFAR and a currently funded prototype station LOPES. This should also be applicable to other future digital radio telescopes such as the Square Kilometer Array (SKA). LOFAR will be capable of detecting air-shower radio emission from >2×1014 to ∼1020 eV. The technique could be easily extended to include air shower arrays consisting of particle detectors (KASCADE, Auger), thus providing crucial additional information for obtaining energy and chemical composition of cosmic rays. It also has the potential to extend the cosmic ray search well beyond an energy of 1021 eV if isotropic radio signatures can be found. Other issues that LOFAR can address are to determine the neutral component of the cosmic ray spectrum, possibly look for neutron bursts, and do actual cosmic ray astronomy.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/69bace3f4e4deea8ad19dc4e39d52bd38194970b

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Heino Falcke
2. Robert P. Fender
3. S. Jester
4. S. Markoff
5. P. Best
6. J. Verbiest
7. H. Intema
8. B. W. Stappers

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. Robert P. Fender
2. S. Markoff
3. Heino Falcke
4. S. Jester
5. P. Best
6. H. Intema
7. Tim Huege
8. J. Miller-Jones

Citations in the corpus

• Science with a lunar low-frequency array: From the dark ages of the Universe to nearby exoplanets (2009, background): “Of particular interest for a lunar array are studies of the earliest phase of the universe which are not easily accessibleby other means.”
• Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number : 1072954 Registered office : (2004, background): “In the context of next generation digital telescopes more ambitious possibilities have been described (LOFAR [39]).”
• Radio detection of cosmic ray air showers in the digital era (2016, background): “In the early 2000s, the idea arose to apply digital radio detection to the problem of cosmic ray physics [17].”
• LOFAR: The LOw-Frequency ARray (2013, background): “…combined with the wide-field nature of its receivers make it a uniquely powerful instrument for the detection and study of CRs. Air showers of charged particles produced by CRs striking the Earth’s upper atmosphere can generate bright, extremely short duration radio pulses (Falcke & Gorham 2003).”