A new limit on the Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic-Ray flux with the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope

Abstract

A particle cascade (shower) in a dielectric, for example as initiated by an ultra-high energy cosmic ray, will have an excess of electrons which will emit coherent Čerenkov radiation, known as the Askaryan effect. In this work we study the case in which such a particle shower occurs in a medium just below its surface. We show, for the first time, that the radiation transmitted through the surface is independent of the depth of the shower below the surface when observed from far away, apart from trivial absorption effects. As a direct application we use the recent results of the NuMoon project, where a limit on the neutrino flux for energies above $10^{22}$\,eV was set using the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope by measuring pulsed radio emission from the Moon, to set a limit on the flux of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays.

Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D

References in corpus (4)

• A Macroscopic Description of Coherent Geo-Magnetic Radiation from Cosmic Ray Air Showers
• New Limits on the Ultra-high Energy Cosmic Neutrino Flux from the ANITA Experiment
• Measurement of the Flux of Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays by the Stereo Technique
• Macroscopic Treatment of Radio Emission from Cosmic Ray Air Showers based on Shower Simulations

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Radio detection of Cosmic-Ray Air Showers and High-Energy Neutrinos
• A lunar radio experiment with the Parkes radio telescope for the LUNASKA project
• On the nature of radio-wave radiation from particle cascades
• A limit on the ultra-high-energy neutrino flux from lunar observations with the Parkes radio telescope
• Constraining the spin-independent elastic scattering cross section of dark matter using the Moon as a detection target and the background neutrino data
• Near-future discovery of point sources of ultra-high-energy neutrinos
• High Energy Neutrinos and Cosmic Rays