The renaissance of radio detection of cosmic rays

Abstract

Nearly 50 years ago, the first radio signals from cosmic ray air showers were detected. After many successful studies, however, research ceased not even 10 years later. Only a decade ago, the field was revived with the application of powerful digital signal processing techniques. Since then, the detection technique has matured, and we are now in a phase of transition from small-scale experiments accessing energies below 1018 eV to experiments with a reach for energies beyond 1019 eV. We have demonstrated that air shower radio signals carry information on both the energy and the mass of the primary particle, and current experiments are in the process of quantifying the precision with which this information can be accessed. All of this rests on a solid understanding of the radio emission processes which can be interpreted as a coherent superposition of geomagnetic emission, Askaryan charge-excess radiation, and Cherenkov-like coherence effects arising in the density gradient of the atmosphere. In this article, I highlight the "state of the art" of radio detection of cosmic rays and briefly discuss its perspectives for the next few years.

9 pages, highlight contribution at the ICRC 2013

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Cited by in corpus (14)

• A large light-mass component of cosmic rays at 10^{17} - 10^{17.5} eV from radio observations
• Energy Estimation of Cosmic Rays with the Engineering Radio Array of the Pierre Auger Observatory
• A First Search for Cosmogenic Neutrinos with the ARIANNA Hexagonal Radio Array
• Measurement of cosmic-ray air showers with the Tunka Radio Extension (Tunka-Rex)
• A parameterization for the radio emission of air showers as predicted by CoREAS simulations and applied to LOFAR measurements
• Reconstruction of the energy and depth of maximum of cosmic-ray air-showers from LOPES radio measurements
• The shape of the radio wavefront of extensive air showers as measured with LOFAR
• First Experimental Characterization of Microwave Emission from Cosmic Ray Air Showers
• Nanosecond-level time synchronization of autonomous radio detector stations for extensive air showers
• The Giant Radio Array for Neutrino Detection
• Radio pulses from ultra-high energy atmospheric showers as the superposition of Askaryan and geomagnetic mechanisms
• Simulations of reflected radio signals from cosmic ray induced air showers
• Radio detection of cosmic rays: present and future
• Radio detection of air showers with LOFAR and AERA