The Lateral Distribution Function of Coherent Radio Emission from Extensive Air Showers; Determining the Chemical Composition of Cosmic Rays
arXiv:1008.3308 · doi:10.1016/j.astropartphys.2010.08.003
Abstract
The lateral distribution function (LDF) for coherent electromagnetic radiation from air showers initiated by ultra-high-energy cosmic rays is calculated using a macroscopic description. A new expression is derived to calculate the coherent radio pulse at small distances from the observer. It is shown that for small distances to the shower axis the shape of the electric pulse is determined by the `pancake' function, describing the longitudinal distribution of charged particles within the shower front, while for large distances the pulse is determined by the shower profile. This reflects in a different scaling of the LDF at small and at large distances. As a first application we calculate the LDF for proton- and iron-induced showers and we show that this offers a very sensitive measure to discriminate between these two. We show that due to interference between the geo-magnetic and the charge-excess contributions the intensity pattern of the radiation is not circular symmetric.
9 pages, 14 figures; submitted to Astroparticle Physics
References in corpus (6)
- One-dimensional Hybrid Approach to Extensive Air Shower Simulation
- A Macroscopic Description of Coherent Geo-Magnetic Radiation from Cosmic Ray Air Showers
- Radioelectric Field Features of Extensive Air Showers Observed with CODALEMA
- Macroscopic Treatment of Radio Emission from Cosmic Ray Air Showers based on Shower Simulations
- Dependence of geosynchrotron radio emission on the energy and depth of maximum of cosmic ray showers
- Progress in Air Shower Radio Measurements: Detection of Distant Events
Cited by in corpus (12)
- Radio detection of Cosmic-Ray Air Showers and High-Energy Neutrinos
- Reconstruction of the energy and depth of maximum of cosmic-ray air-showers from LOPES radio measurements
- Probing Atmospheric Electric Fields in Thunderstorms through Radio Emission from Cosmic-Ray-Induced Air Showers
- The wavefront of the radio signal emitted by cosmic ray air showers
- Measurement of the circular polarization in radio emission from extensive air showers confirms emission mechanisms
- The air shower maximum probed by Cherenkov effects from radio emission
- Measuring the Polarization Reconstruction Resolution of the ARIANNA Neutrino Detector with Cosmic Rays
- Simulation of radio signals from cosmic-ray cascades in air and ice as observed by in-ice Askaryan radio detectors
- Determining Atmospheric Electric Fields using MGMR3D
- Polarisation signatures in radio for inclined cosmic-ray induced air-shower identification
- Observation of In-ice Askaryan Radiation from High-Energy Cosmic Rays
- Numerical Simulation of Radio Signal from Extended Air Showers