Prospects for determining air shower characteristics through geosynchrotron emission arrival times

Abstract

Using simulations of geosynchrotron radiation from extensive air showers, we present a relation between the shape of the geosynchrotron radiation front and the distance of the observer to the maximum of the air shower. By analyzing the relative arrival times of radio pulses at several radio antennas in an air shower array, this relation may be employed to estimate the depth of maximum of an extensive air shower if its impact position is known, allowing an estimate for the primary particle's species. Vice versa, the relation provides an estimate for the impact position of the shower's core if an external estimate of the depth of maximum is available. In realistic circumstances, the method delivers reconstruction uncertainties down to 30 g/cm^2 when the distance to the shower core does not exceed 7 km. The method requires that the arrival direction is known with high precision.

7 pages, 9 figures. Accepted for publication in Astroparticle Physics.

References in corpus (6)

• Measurement of the Depth of Maximum of Extensive Air Showers above 10^18 eV
• A Macroscopic Description of Coherent Geo-Magnetic Radiation from Cosmic Ray Air Showers
• Radioelectric Field Features of Extensive Air Showers Observed with CODALEMA
• Dependence of geosynchrotron radio emission on the energy and depth of maximum of cosmic ray showers
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Cited by in corpus (7)

• Radio detection of cosmic ray air showers in the digital era
• The wavefront of the radio signal emitted by cosmic ray air showers
• The LOPES experiment - recent results, status and perspectives
• Tunka-Rex: Status and Results of the First Measurements (RICAP 2013)
• Tunka-Rex: a Radio Antenna Array for the Tunka Experiment (ARENA 2012)
• Measurement of Radio Emission from Extensive Air Showers with LOPES
• Ill-posed formulation of the emission source localization in the radio-detection experiments of extensive air showers